Free Gregory Curtis by Disarmed: The Story of the Venus De Milo

but he reigned as a constitutional monarch and was by nature neither oppressive nor vindictive. The economy, stalled by the reparations and several years of drought and poor harvests, took off in 1820. At last France was free of war, free of fear, and free of the absolute power of the emperor.
    Suddenly, French taste and French style dominated Europe. Elegant shops in Paris were filled with luxurious baubles like a pair of pistols set with gold and pearls that shot perfume instead of bullets. Even the emperor of Austria bought lace, gloves, and stockings for his wife in Paris. French cuisine returned to its preeminence. Paris had more than three thousand restaurants and three to four thousand cafés. Even at the best of them the bill fordinner was still reasonable, especially when compared with prices in London or other European capitals. But the food was only part of the experience at a Parisian restaurant. One traveler wrote,
    No other capital of Europe can boast of such luxurious establishments open day and night with varied menus, in which one can have a meal at any time, and where one can enjoy peace and solitude among the crowd. Writers, princes, artists, judges, ministers, deputies, soldiers, foreigners from all over, Croesuses of all classes and ages, beauties from the north or south—how many races and eccentrics the viewer sees!
    There were broad boulevards lined with trees and crowded with shops, cafés, and theaters. In the evening people strolled there or stopped at a café for a lemonade, a beer, or an ice. Just watching the passing crowd was rich entertainment. Peddlers, bootblacks, sword swallowers, jugglers, acrobats, pickpockets, and fortune-tellers made the boulevards a perpetual fair.
    Indulgences that were forbidden in other countries were tolerated, if not encouraged, in Paris. There was gambling, drinking, and prostitution. Well-dressed women walked alone amid the luxurious shops and restaurants of thePalais Royal. They would take their customers to a room in an attic or underground to a small closet in a cellar where, according to an English guidebook of the era, the two would indulge in “frightful and unimaginable sensuality … such as no Englishman can conceive.” Thus warned, the English swarmed across the channel and into Paris. In London there was even a famous afterdinner toast: “London and liberty! Edinburgh and education! Paris and pocket money!”
    All this is recognizable in Paris still. But in many other ways the city of 1821 was not at all like the Paris of today. There was no Eiffel Tower. There was no Sacré-Coeur looking down acrossthe city from atop Montmartre. The Place de la Concorde was mud and ditches. The banks of the Seine were mud, not stone, and lined with public baths and laundries. TheArc de Triomphe, which wouldn’t be completed for fifteen more years, was nothing but four pitiful stumps.
    The population was 800,000, by far the largest of any city on the Continent, and growing daily. Although the boulevards were spacious, the streets were narrow, crooked, and dark. Houses were built with the upper floors overhanging the lower ones so that slop could be poured out the windows into the street. The mess would lie there until passing horses, carriages, or pedestrians pressed it into the mud. Then the rain transformed it all into a black sludge. People who walked in the streets fouled their boots, trousers, skirts, and gloves. Arriving at a destination in spotless clothes was a sign of wealth, since it meant one could afford a carriage. The stench was overwhelming. What sewers there were ran directly into the Seine, where people bathed and drew drinking water.
    Many people were sensible enough to drink only wine, but that was not enough to prevent general devastation from disease. Life expectancy was only thirty-nine. Diseases like tuberculosis and hepatitis were rampant, and every few years an epidemic of cholera would sweep through the city.
    A skilled worker might earn