To make Paris less dirty

Are we finally going to make Paris cleaner? Each new police prefect, as soon as he is installed, recalls the instructions of his predecessors. The street is not a garbage can or a dump and it is appropriate that Parisians convince themselves of this, otherwise they would be sorry. We have put around certain gas jets delicious baskets where one can deposit old newspapers, a bag of chestnuts, a banana skin or an orange peel.

The principle is excellent, as is the principle of the ticket box at the exit of the Métropolitain, but the least observant people have noticed that out of a hundred tickets, not two fall into the accessory intended to receive them.

Could it be that the Parisian is not careful?

But if taken in particular, he is entirely of my opinion and of the prefect's opinion; he declares that his city is disgusting and that it is time for it to stop. He looks with disgust at the streams where all the cabbage leaves of the greengrocers are rotting, he protests because he sees a dairyman pushing the straw from his egg baskets onto the sidewalk; he is indignant because a young girl who has just bitten into an apple throws the core into the street before going back to the workshop. He is quite ready to report to the police officer the bad citizen who is getting rid of the evening paper he has just finished reading at random; but, grabbing me by a button to convince me that, if he were something in the oils, it would not happen like this, this Parisian, my fellow man, my brother, shrugs his shoulders in disgust and spits on the ground to show his indignation... - D.