I had been in Paris before, and so I recognised at once the place to which
Alice had directed her course. It was the Garden of the Tuileries with
its old chestnut-trees, its iron railings, its fortress moat, and its
brutal-looking Zouave sentinels. Passing the palace, passing the Church of
St. Roche, on the steps of which the first Napoleon for the first time shed
French blood, we came to a halt high over the Boulevard des Italiens, where
the third Napoleon did the same thing and with the same success. Crowds of
people, dandies young and old, workmen in blouses, women in gaudy dresses,
were thronging on the pavements; the gilded restaurants and cafés were
flaring with lights; omnibuses, carriages of all sorts and shapes, moved
to and fro along the boulevard; everything was bustle, everything was
brightness, wherever one chanced to look.... But, strange to say, I had
no inclination to forsake my pure dark airy height. I had no inclination
to get nearer to this human ant-hill. It seemed as though a hot, heavy,
reddish vapour rose from it, half-fragrance, half-stench; so many lives
were flung struggling in one heap together there. I was hesitating.... But
suddenly, sharp as the clang of iron bars, the voice of a harlot of the
streets floated up to me; like an insolent tongue, it was thrust out, this
voice; it stung me like the sting of a viper. At once I saw in imagination
the strong, heavy-jawed, greedy, flat Parisian face, the mercenary eyes,
the paint and powder, the frizzed hair, and the nosegay of gaudy artificial
flowers under the high-pointed hat, the polished nails like talons, the
hideous crinoline.... I could fancy too one of our sons of the steppes
running with pitiful eagerness after the doll put up for sale.... I could
fancy him with clumsy coarseness and violent stammering, trying to imitate
the manners of the waiters at Véfour’s, mincing, flattering, wheedling ...
and a feeling of loathing gained possession of me.... ‘No,’ I thought,
‘here Alice has no need to be jealous....’
Meanwhile I perceived that we had gradually begun to descend.... Paris was
rising to meet us with all its din and odour....
‘Stop,’ I said to Alice. ‘Are you not stifled and oppressed here?’
‘You asked me to bring you here yourself.’
‘I am to blame, I take back my word. Take me away, Alice, I beseech you. To
be sure, here is Prince Kulmametov hobbling along the boulevard; and his
friend, Serge Varaksin, waves his hand to him, shouting: “Ivan Stepanitch,
_allons souper_, make haste, zhay angazha Rigol-bouche itself!” Take
me away from these furnished apartments and _maisons dorées_, from the
Jockey Club and the Figaro, from close-shaven military heads and varnished
barracks, from sergents-de-ville with Napoleonic beards, and from glasses
of muddy absinthe, from gamblers playing dominoes at the cafés, and
gamblers on the Bourse, from red ribbons in button-holes, from M. de Four,
inventor of ‘matrimonial specialities,’ and the gratuitous consultations of
Dr. Charles Albert, from liberal lectures and government pamphlets, from
Parisian comedies and Parisian operas, from Parisian wit and Parisian
ignorance.... Away! away! away!’
‘Look down,’ Alice answered; ‘you are not now in Paris.’
I lowered my eyes.... It was true. A dark plain, intersected here and there
by the whitish lines of roads, was rushing rapidly by below us, and only
behind us on the horizon, like the reflection of an immense conflagration,
rose the great glow of the innumerable lights of the capital of the world.