Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/77

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maid ceased to be an angel before the honeymoon had well begun; and, if we are to believe polite fiction, was already one of the pursued of snaring sinners before she was a week a bride.

The Paris of this class is not the Paris that charms and holds you in its spell. The fast, luxurious, and expensive Paris belongs to it; the cosmopolitan Paris, kept going by the millions of the foreigners who come here to amuse themselves. Theirs is the Rue de la Paix, the Concours Hyppique, the Arménonville Restaurant, the Bois, the avenues of the Champs Elysées and the Parc Monceau, the race-courses, the Théâtre Français "Tuesdays," the charity bazaars, the flower feasts and exhibitions, the automobile competitions, the "five-o'clocks," and M. Brunetière's lectures on Bossuet. This is the rowdy, reactionary Paris, ever on view, which disapproves of the Pope, and would assuredly array itself in garments of gaiety if M. Loubet were assassinated. This is the Paris which sneers at rasta-quouères, and is ever on the lookout for American heiresses for its needy titled sons, which is rabidly anti-Semitic, and supports its prestige upon Jewish millions. Quite recently, when anti-Semitism was raging in France, and we were informed in every tone of fury and contempt that no self-respecting Catholic could possibly regard a Jew as an honest man or a French subject, an authentic French marquis