remains, and will, I imagine, remain the most distinguished, the most serene, restaurant in Paris, in its retired situation at the corner of the Rue Saint-Honoré and the Rue Cambon, with its simple decoration, its unhastening order and despatch, its Napoleonic head-waiter, its Bacchic wine-waiter (with a head that calls for vine leaves) and its fastidious cuisine. To Voisin's I should always make my way when I wished not only to be delicately nourished but to be quiet and philosophic and retired. Only one other restaurant do I know where the cooking gives me the satisfaction of Voisin's—where excessive richness never intrudes—and that is a discovery of my own and not lightly to be given away. Voisin's is a name known all over the world: one can say nothing new about Voisin's; but the little restaurant with which I propose to tantalise you, although the resort of some of the most thoughtful eaters in Paris, has a reputation that has not spread. It is not cheap, it is little less dear indeed than the Café Anglais or Paillard's, to name the two restaurants of renown which are nearest to it; its cellar is poor and limited to half a dozen wines; its two rooms are minute and hot; but the idea of gastronomy reigns—everything is subordinated to the food and the cooking. If you order a trout, it is the best trout that France can breed, and it is swimming in the kitchen at the time the solitary waiter repeats your command; no such asparagus reaches any other Paris restaurant, no such Pré Salé and no such wild strawberries. But I have said enough; almost I fear I have said too much. These discoveries must be kept sacred.

And for lunch to-day? Shall it be chez Voisin, or chez Foyot, by the Sénat, or chez Lapérouse (where the two Stevensons used to eat and talk) on the Quai des Augustins? Or shall it be at my nameless restaurant?

Voisin's to-day, I think.

CHAPTER II
THE ILE DE LA CITÉ

Paris Old and New—The Heart of France—Saint Louis—Old Palaces—Henri IV.'s Statue—Ironical Changes—The Seine and the Thames—The Quais and their Old Books—Diderot and the Lady—Police and Red Tape—The Conciergerie—Marie Antoinette—Paris and its Clocks—Méryon's Etchings—French Advocates—A Hall of Babel—Sainte Chapelle—French Newspapers Serious and Comic—The Only Joke—The English and the French.

Where to begin? That is a problem in the writing of every book, but peculiarly so with Paris; because, however one may try to be chronological, the city is such a blend of old and new that that design is frustrated at every turn. Nearly every building of importance stands on the site of some other which instantly jerks us back hundreds of years, while if we deal first with the original structure, such as the remains of the Roman Thermes at the Cluny, built about 300, straightway the Cluny itself intrudes, and we leap from the third century to the nineteenth; or if we trace the line of the wall of Philip Augustus we come swiftly to so modern an institution as the Mont-de-Piété; or if we climb to such a recent thoroughfare as the Boulevard de Clichy, with its palpitatingly novel cabarets and allurements, we must in order to do so ascend a mountain which takes its name from the martyrdom of St. Denis and his companions in the third century. It is therefore well, since Paris is such a tangle of past and present, to disregard order altogether and to let these pages reflect her character. Expect then, dear reader, to be twitched about the ages without mercy.

Let us begin in earnest by leaving the mainland and adventuring upon an island. For the heart of Paris is enisled: Notre Dame, Sainte Chapelle, the Palais de Justice, the Hôtel Dieu, the Préfecture de Police, the Morgue—all are entirely surrounded by water. The history of the Cité is the history of Paris, almost the history of France.

Paris, the home of the Parisii, consisted of nothing but this island when Julius Cæsar arrived there with his conquering host. The Romans built their palace here, and here Julian the Apostate loved to sojourn. It was in Julian's reign that the name was changed from Lutetia (which it is still called by picturesque writers) to Parisea Civitas, from which Paris is an easy derivative. The Cité remained the home of government when the Merovingians under Clovis expelled the Romans, and again under the Carlovingians. The second Royal Palace was begun by the first of the Capets, Hugh, in the tenth century, and it was completed by Robert the Pious in the eleventh. Louis VII. decreed Notre Dame; but it was Saint Louis, reigning from 1226 to 1270, who was the father of the Cité as we now know it. He it was who built Sainte Chapelle, and it was he who surrendered part of the Palace to the Law.

While it was the home of the Court and the Church the island naturally had little enough room for ordinary residents, who therefore had to live, whether aristocrats or tradespeople, on the mainland, either on the north or south side of the river. The north side was for the most part given to merchants, the south to scholars, for Saint Louis was the builder not only of Sainte Chapelle but also of the Sorbonne. Very few of the smaller buildings of that time now remain: the oldest Paris that one now wanders in so delightedly, whether on the north bank or the south, whether near the Sorbonne or the Hôtel de Sens, dates, with a few fortunate exceptions, from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Nowhere may the growth of Paris be better observed and better understood than on the highest point on this Island of the City—on the summit of Notre Dame. Standing there you quickly comprehend the Paris of the ages: from Cæsar's Lutetia, occupying the island only and surrounded by fields and wastes, to the Paris of this year of our Lord, spreading over the neighbouring hills, such a hive of human activity and energy as will hardly bear thinking of—a Paris which has thrown off the yoke not only of the kings that once were all-powerful but of the Church too.

By the twelfth century the kings of France had begun to live in smaller palaces more to their personal taste, such as the Hôtel Barbette, the Hôtel de Sens (much of which still stands, as a glass factory, at the corner of the Rue de l'Hôtel de Ville and the Rue de Figuier, one of the oldest of the Paris mansions), the Hôtel de Bourgogne (in the Rue Etienne Marcel: you may still see its tower of Jean Sans Peur), the Hôtel de Nevers (what remains of which is at the corner of the Rue Colbert and Rue Richelieu), and, of course, the Louvre. Charles VII. (1422-1461) was the first king to settle at the Louvre permanently.

To gain the Ile de la Cité we leave the mainland of Paris at the Quai du Louvre, and make our crossing by the Pont Neuf. Neuf no longer, for as a matter of historical fact it is now the oldest of all the Paris bridges: that is, in its foundations, for the visible part of it has been renovated quite recently. The first stone of it was laid by Henri III. in 1578: it was not ready for many years, but in 1603 Henri IV. (of Navarre) ventured across a plank of it on his way to the Louvre, after several previous adventurers had broken their necks in the attempt. "So much the less kings they," was his comment. He lived to see the bridge finished.

Behind the statue of this monarch, whom the French still adore, is the garden that finishes off the west end of the Ile very prettily, sending its branches up above the parapet. Here we may stop; for we are now on the Island itself, midway between the two halves of the bridge, and the statue has such a curious history, so typical of the French character, that I should like to