Now you must not expect that I shall or can give you a description of all the fine things that I have seen or am about to see, for they have been so often described before that it would be a perfect waste of time, and I can do better in referring you at once to the Guide des Voyageurs a Paris; so that I shall content myself with merely indicating these objects which make the most impression on me.
My first visit was, as you will have no doubt guessed, to the Palais Royal: there I breakfasted, there I dined, and there I passed the whole day without the least ennui. It is a world in itself. It swarms at present with officers of the Allied army. The variety of uniforms adds to the splendour and novelty of the scene. The restaurants and cafes are filled with them. The Palais Royal is certainly the temple of animal gratification, the paradise of gastronomes. The officers are indulging in all sorts of luxury, revelling in Champaign and Burgundy, in all the pleasures of the belly, as well as in iis quae sub ventre sunt. ’Twill be a famous harvest for the restaurateurs and for the Cyprians who parade up and down the Arcades, sure of a constant succession of suitors. In fact, whatever be the taste of a man, whether sensual or intellectual or both, he can gratify himself here without moving out of the precincts of the Palais Royal. Here are cafes, restaurants, shops of all kinds whose display of clocks, jewellery, stuffs, silks, merchandize from all parts of the world, is most brilliant and dazzling; here you find reading-rooms where newspapers, reviews and pamphlets of all tongues, nations and languages are to be met with; here are museums of paintings, statues, plans in relief, cosmoramas; here are libraries, gaming houses, houses of fair reception; cellars where music, dancing and all kinds of orgies are carried on; exhibitions of all sorts, learned pigs, dancing dogs, military canary birds, hermaphrodites, giants, dwarf jugglers from Hindostan, catawbas from