CITIES HERE AND THERE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21716, 3 February 1934, Page 4 (Supplement)

CITIES HERE AND THERE

BY ISABEL M. TEACOCKE

One could not have a greater contrast between cities than the contrast between Edinburgh and Paris —one stern, sombre, majestic, the other light, bright, spacious, overflowing with lifo and movement. France's capital is ono of the most beautiful cities in the world, with broad treelined streets, noble buildings, graceful arches and the swift, Seino flowing through tho town under numerous great stono bridges. The famous Bois de Boulogne with its avenues of glorious old trees, and its riding track is delightful, for one needs only to travel a few steps from the busy rush of the traffic to wander in shady woodlimd paths and leafy glades. Paris is a bright city fn summer when all the trees are thick with rustling green leaves and outside every cafe are tlu; open-air restaurants, where, -at gay little green tables set amidst a miniature forest of flowering shrubs in painted tubs, men, women and children sit eating and drinking and laughing together. Of course, like every old city she has her crowded and filthy slums where you see thin, wolfish-look-ing men and women and poor wizenfaced children, but the gay Parisian likes to foVget about these dark and dreadful places and live in the sunshine of the fine boulevardes, stroll or ride under giant chestnuts, sip his glass of wine or eau do suere at the pavement restaurants, or dash about the streets in motor-cars at such an amazing speed that it is a marvel there are not more accidents than the many which occur daily. The gendarmes or police of Paris have a quaint custom of arresting the pedestrian who has been knocked down instead of the motorist who bo\vled him over, and unless tho pedestrian can prove with absolute certainty that he was in no way to blame he is severely admonished and fined, and as the poor pedestrian, if he is lucky enough to be alive and able to speak at all, is too bewildered and panic-stricken after being extricated from a bewildering mass of vehicles all honking furiously and tearing about as thickly as bees in an overturned hive, to recollect anything clearly, he is thankful to escape with nothing more than a fine. The Paris shops are wonderful. The finest of them do not have the crowded window displays to which we are accustomed, but drape a window in black velvet or silver brocade and in the middle of the window-space may be seen a single dainty high-arched shoe with diamond buckles and heels, or perhaps a small expensive model hat, or may be a string of pearls on a blue velvet' cushion, the single object displayed being brilliantly lighted by the concentrated rays of hidden electric lights. It is very effective. In the more crowded shopping centres it puzzled me to see over certain of the butchers' shops the brass model of a horse's head until I learned that this is to indicate that horse-flesh is sold in that shop. It is very largely eaten by the working classes of Paris' and is served in many large and fine looking restaurants, being entered on the menu as " rosbif," which is simply a French corruption of what Ave call roast beef. I once very narrowly escaped having | a meal of horse myself, having innocently ordered roast beef, but becoming suspicious of the raw-red toughlooking rounds of meat on my plate, I made enquiries, and to my horror discovered that this was " rosbif '' in plain English, ancient cab-horse. I rose and remarking sternly, "In my countrv we ride horses; we do not eat them," I then left that restaurant, never to return. One could fill a book with descriptions of the historic and beautiful buildings. The great .Cathedral of Notre Dame was begun in the 12th century and took nearly a hundred years. to complete. What a magnificent building it is with its numberless towers and spires and bell-turrets, its hundreds of carved figures of the saints and its weird gargoyles leering down into tho

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street just as it was all described in that wonderful book, " The Hunchback of Notre Dame." And inside the church is just as splendid with its massive altars ablaze with candle-light, its shadowy arches and gigantic pillars and the coloured windows through which streams the sunlight in red and blue and purple and gold. Of- the Palace of the. Tuileries, the royal residence in the days of the French Monarchy, little remains, most of the building being destroyed in 1870, but the gardens are beautiful and close by is the Louvre, the national Art Gallery of France, in which are some of the most famous paintings and sculptures in the world. Under the Arc de 'l'riomphe burns'and flickers for ever the golden jet of the undying flame which lias been set there above the ashes of the Unknown Warrior of France as the sign that his memory shall never die. Gay and beautiful as Paris is now, there are many spots which speak silently of those grim and bloody days of " The Terror as the French .Revolution was known—days when no one knew from one hour to another that he or she might not be the next victim of the dread guillotine. There is the old Conciergerie or prison from which the poor brave aristocrats in their tumbled finery were taken in tumbrils or carts which rolled slowly through the shrieking mobs to the place of execution. A grim, dark, cruel old building it is, whose very stones seem to speak of ancient horrors. The awful spot where the guillotine stood waiting for its victims with its flashing knife and grisly basket beneath is now marked by a stone obelisque. The tomb of Napoleon, in which the body of the Emperor is buried afte/ lying for twenty years jn an obscure grave, is a circular well of solid marble. The gigantic and splendid colfin or sarcophagus in whicH the body lies was presented by the late Tsar of Russia, and there at the foot of a marble flight of steps leading down into the great black marble bowl are enshrined the bones of the greatest of emperors and tyrants the world has ever known. Another curious, but interesting building is the Pantheon, a huge circular building which was originally built for a church, but has been used for many years as the burial place of famous men. When I was in Paris there was then showing at the Pantheon a marvellous panoramic painting of the Great War—painted by fifteen artists over a period of three years. Every country which had sent fighting men to the war was represented in that picture, and of course I looked for little New Zealand, and found her away down in the corner of the great painting represented by a little group of soldiers and statesmen, some of the faces well known to New Zealanders. An amusing and interesting district is the Latin quarter where students from all parts of the world come to study the arts or professions. It is a half dingy, half artistic looking district where one may see men and women strolling in the streets in the most fantastic costumes. The whole of the city of Paris is enclosed by a wall 22 miles long and a ring of forts for protection against invasion, for during #s long history Paris has often been attacked and France has never forgotten her shame and grief when in 1870 the conquering Germans entered the 'beautiful city and forced it into submission. No wonder that during the late Great War there was not a Frenchman in all La Belle France who would not cheerfully have given his life to prevent that happening again. (To be continued)