Paris! for once I defy you to remain indifferent. You have had much to
bear, during these latter days; it has been said to you, that you
should kneel in your churches no more, and you have not knelt there;
that the newspapers that pleased you, should be read no more, and you
have not read them. You have continued to smile—with but the tips of
your lips, it is true—and to promenade on the boulevards. But now comes
stalking on that which will make you shudder indeed! Do you know what I
have just read in the _Indépendance Belge_? Ah! poor Paris, the days of
your glory are past, your ancient fame is destroyed, the old nursery
rhyme will mock you, “_Vous n’irez plus au Bois, vos lauriers sont
coupés._”[62] This is what has happened; you are supplanted on the
throne of fashion. The world, uneasy about the form of bonnet to be
worn this sorrowful year, and seeing you occupied with your internal
discords, anxiously turned to London for help, and London henceforth
dictates to all the modistes of the universe. City of desolation, I
pity you! No more will you impose your sovereign laws, concerning
_Suivez-moi-jeune-homme_[63] and dog-skin gloves. No more will your
boots and shirt-collars reach, by the force of their reputation, the
sparely-dressed inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands. And, deepest of
humiliations, it is your old rival, it is your tall and angular sister,
it is the black city of London, who takes your glittering sword and
transforms it into a policeman’s baton of wood! You are destined to see
within your walls—if any walls remain to you—your own wives and
daughters clog their dainty tread with encumbrances of English leather,
flatten their heads beneath mushroom-shaped hats, surround themselves
with crinoline and flounces, and wear magenta, that abominable mixture
of red and blue which always filled your soul with horror. Then, to
increase the resemblance of your Parisian women with the Londoners or
Cockneys (for it is time you learnt the fashionable language of
England), your dentists will sell them new sets of teeth, called
insular sets, which can be fitted over their natural front teeth, and
will protrude about a third of an inch beyond the upper lip. And they
will have corsets offered them whose aim is to prolong the waist to the
farthest possible limits and compress the fairest forms—a fact, for
report says they lace in London, whilst here we have nearly abandoned
the corset. Well, my Paris, do you tremble and shiver? Oh! when those
days of horror come to pass! when you see that not only have you
forfeited your pride, but your vanity too; when you are convinced that
the Commune has not only rendered you odious, but ridiculous as well;
ah! then, when you wear bonnets that you have not invented, how deeply
will you regret that you did not rebel on that day, when some of the
best of your citizens were put _au secret_ in the cells of Mazas
prison![64]