OUR PARIS LETTER

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 150, 29 June 1928, Page 15

OUR PARIS LETTER

WHERE TO WALK THE NARROW WAY (From "The Post's" Representative.) PARIS, ISth April. Among the most amusing sights in Paris just now aro the efforts of the police to teach citizens how to cross ilie boulevards at those places where .the traffic is heaviest. It was an excellent idea on the part of M. Chiappe, the Prefect of Police, io make life safer for the pedestrian by outlining a path with two rows of metal studs across the road at dangerous spots, but Parisians are not used to being looked after in this way, and they mnch prefer to wander in and out of moving' vehicles at the .risk of their limbs until the oppo,sito pavement is reached. It is one of the latest tasks of tho policeman on fluty to make .them realise that this form of exercise is now forbidden, and one of the diversions of the crowd on the pavement nowadays is to watch an agent follow a pedestrian who is attempting to cross the boulevard in his own way, and bring him back to the pavement to follow the straight and narrow path to safety. Parisians are .slowly learning their, lesson. SEM'S TOBACCO BOX. Sem, the famouSi Paris caricaturist, who has been ill for somo time, has now left, .the nursing homo and returned to his studio in the Boulevard Lanues, where he is pursuing a steady but impatient "convalescence, and, with the .authorisation of his doctor, is receiving his many friends,. whose presents of flowers make the apartment much more like a nursery garden than an artist's workshop. The "Journal" records that one of-his visitors has been the Duke of Westminster, who smoked some good English tobacco with him, and left him, I as a souvenir, an ancient carved tobacco box. Artists, designers, writers, and .actresses have called in numbers to inI quire after Sem's progress, and, indeed, his .doctor has sometimes had to protest that ■ the. receptions were getting too much for his patient. Sem himself stated that he knows the best remedy he could now have is work. THE BITER BIT. M. Georges Clcmenceau has just given a characteristic interview to a journalist who.desired to hear the aged statesman's views on the qualities that, form a man of feeling and action. Like all such interviews that have been given in M. Cleinenceau's residence in the Eve de Franklin in late years, it failed in its objoct, and although the journalist, who represented "Comoedia," made very ingenious attempts to draw himout, the roles were reversed, and he himself had l to answer a series of questions bearing on the value of professional careers. The ■ visitor was "not to be gainsaid; however. Once he seemed to have reached a point within easy distance of his goal. "Action," said M. Clcmenceau, fingering his moustache, "demands one thing from a man " "And that is —What?" queried the in-, terviewer. "That is just what I shall not tell you," was tho answer. And then M. Clemenceau proceeded to talk of his country retreat at Sablesd'Olonne. WOMAN STAR-GAZBK. Women haVo conquered the entry to many professions, but a Woman astronomer is still 'sufficiently raro to be somewhat of a curiosity. Paris, however, or, rather, the Paris district, has one in the person of Madame Plammariou, tho widow of the famous scientist, v.^lio for thirty years before his death in 1925, studied, wrote, and lived in the observatory at Juvisy. Madame Flaihmarion lias just told how her husband was the recipient of thousands of letters from those who hoped to communicate with tho spirits of the.dead. The work the astronomer did in his lifetime goes steadily on, and the library, richly stored with thousands of volumes, is the centre of research. It is interesting' to recall that tho house itself stands on a site where Louis XIV. stopped for, relays of horses during his 1 journeys to Fontainbleau. s POLICE MUSEUM. How many people are aware that there is an interesting historical museum at the Paris Police Prefecture? It .is not, as might be imagined, a chamber of horrors; there are ho. instrument's of torture, nor is there even a guillotine, nor collections of fearsome relics; Its treasures are mainly composed of souvenirs bearing, it is true, on criminal affairs, but they are a collection of pieces connected with celebrated political cases, orders for arrests, which includes that for tho arrest of Kavaillac, the assassin of Henry IV. (1610), and another interesting feature in; this class is the collection of prison registers, including that of the Bastille, which contains a large number of illustrious'names of the past. There is also a portrait gallery of Police Prefects and ofiher notable officials of the institution and an array of police uni forms of historical value—a multitude of exhibits; in fact, which would be well woith the attention of, say; a cinema producer engaged on an historical film.