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CHAPTER X
THE PARISIAN LECTURE AND SALON
In no city in the world is the public lecturer so
popular as in Paris. The Conférence is almost
a national institution, like the salon and
the foyer. I will frankly confess that I find
the average Parisian lecturer overrated, and the
whole thing sadly overdone. In the winter
and spring there are a great deal too many lectures,
on too many subjects, but that is the way
the Parisian, above all, Parisian woman, likes
to take a dose of culture. When the season
opens in January, you will generally find that
your friends have subscribed somewhere or
other for a course of lectures—six or twelve.
Sometimes they take place in the lecture-hall of
the Rue Caumartin, or in a lecture-hall in the
Rue Boissy d'Anglas, or at the Societé Géographique
on the Boulevard St. Germain. Then
there are the lectures of the Sorbonne, or the
Collége de France, where the salaried professors
of the State lecture, and a host of stray lectures
