The Thirteen

Certain streets in Paris are as degraded as a man covered with infamy; also there are noble streets streets simply respectable young streets on the morality of which the public has not yet formed an opinion; also cut-throat streets streets older than the age of the oldest dowagers estimable streets streets always clean streets always dirty working laboring and mercantile streets. In short the streets of Paris have every human quality and impress us by what we must call their physiognomy with certain ideas against which we are defenceless. There are for instance streets of a bad neighborhood in which you could not be induced to live and streets where you would willingly take up your abode. Some streets like the rue Montmartre have a charming head and end in a fish's tail. The rue de la Paix is a wide street a fine street yet it wakens none of those gracefully noble thoughts which come to an impressible mind in the middle of the rue Royale and it certainly lacks the majesty which reigns in the Place Vendome.