Excerpt from Shadows of Old Paris To most anglo-saxons and Americans, Paris of the Twentieth Century is almost as familiar as their native cities. Its crowded Boulevards, brilliant cafés, theatres, and shops are the play ground of hundreds of thousands of English-speaking tourists, whose yearly trip to the Gay City is a regular chapter in the programme of diversion. Though every man is not a Frenchman, each may become, to a certain extent, a Parisian; for the asphalt is hospitable to all nationalities alike, if they will but bring with them a capacity for enjoyment and the wherewithal to pay for it liberally. Yet, amongst the crowds of idlers and pleasure-seekers, of students even, who make the French capital temporarily their home, there are few lovers of tradition curious enough to turn from the dazzling modern city of pleasure, and plunge into the dingy Paris of the past, itself a town within a town, rapidly being swallowed up by the hydra-headed demon of improvement, with its insatiable appetite and power of destruction. Along the quays, some of the Older houses yet remain; in the streets adjoining, fislumbering amid gardens, lie the stately homes of the nobility, a few still occupied by the great families who have inhabited them for generations. But they are fast disappearing, and many have fallen from their high estate to serve as warehouses, or for commercial purposes, or, even, as tenements for the poorest classes of artisans and workmen. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.