FIFTH STATION.
Paris at the present time, and Paris thirty years ago—Prado—Valentino—“La Salpétriére.”—The Evangelical Church—The Deaconess-Institution—“Revue Chrétienne”—Statue of Joan d'Arc—An Attic and a Happy Couple—The Emperor and France.
In Paris I will, first and foremost, pay my respects to a young, new-married couple, and there see a little of Parisian life. I shall first speak of the last.
It was now more than thirty years since I first saw
Paris, and, with my family, spent half a year there.
We were in company, father, mother, six children,
and a Swedish servant; now, I was here alone. But
how well I remember that time, our family circle like
a little Scandinavian vessel tossed on the tempestuous
sea of Parisian life, and half wrecked by it; remember
our hired servant “Clair,” an ultra Buonapartist, who
piloted us through it, and who used, on every occasion
of want or need, to say in a low but significant voice,
“du temps de l'Empereur!” in whose time every thing
was so different, and in his opinion so much better.
This time was then past, Louis XVIII. sat upon his father's throne, and it was then the epoch called “La Restauration.”
The old Parisian life was, however, in its full bloom. The handsome and the ugly, luxury and
