The biggest Paris

Never has Paris been so turned upside down, never have so many streets been turned upside down, never have so many houses been marked for the peak, and the fortifications, in particular, are in full demolition.

Before ten years, there will be nothing left of our legendary Fortifs, which however did not date back a Century.

And a whole other belt of the big city, even more immense, will also have disappeared: the military zone which extends immediately past the ramparts, and even along their ditches. The ban on building permanent dwellings there has caused the shacks and huts to proliferate. With the Fortifs this picturesque area will disappear; and a new and sumptuous Paris will rise and perhaps flourish in their place.

What will this Paris of tomorrow be like? Mr. Maurice Talmeyr, who devotes a detailed and documented chronicle to the "upheavals of Paris", in the Revue des Deux _ Mondes, sketches a colossal plan of the future capital, in accordance with the program: order and hygiene, to which fashion will add one. another with a view to the propagation of sports.

But will Paris obey, to the letter, the dream of its rebuilders? Everything is changing so quickly!… Will our grand boulevards remain what they are, or will it be with them and their establishments what is currently the case with the streets of the Marais and their princely mansions where where the kings came to dance, and where the queens gave masked balls. The Arc de Triomphe itself, in the flood of new constructions, will it not have taken the form of another Saint-Denis gate?...

No one can tell. Let's just think that everything around us will change, pass away, as we change and as we pass...