There is not a street one turns down but which is unique in itself. In the shops along the “Rue de la Paix” the art of satisfying the demands of vanity and the whims of the luxurious has been brought to perfection. The Rue de la Paix is looking its prettiest at noon, the hour when all the little _ouvrières_ and _modèles_ from the smart dressmaking and millinery establishments pour out for their luncheon, happy as school-girls during recess.
If it happens to be a sunny noon with the blue sky as a setting to the gilded balconies brilliant in roses, geraniums and trailing ivy, you will see the street below alive with these merry little women, each one vying with the other in the neatness of her coiffure and the _chic_ of her simple black frock and _fourreau_. They promenade chatting, joking and gossiping, without their hats, for no little _ouvrière_ ever thinks of wearing one until her day’s work is over.
With the exception of the working classes, the average Parisienne is not beautiful. It is her chicness, her vivacity, and her innate knowledge of the artificial which makes her attractive, for not all the actresses in Paris are in the theaters.
In stormy weather you may go to the arcades. These covered _passages_, which have existed through so many Parisian epochs, are honeycombed with shops full of novelties. Such are the Passage de l’Opéra, the Passage des Panoramas and the Passage Choiseul. How many hearts of French children have palpitated as they were dragged through the Passage Jouffroy, containing the very workshop of Santa Claus himself! It is a paradise of things that squeak and wind up; rattling railroad trains which swing around tin curves and under painted tunnels with a rapidity sufficient to suffocate the helpless toy passengers within; toys for poor little good children and rich little spoiled ones, dolls whose deportment is faultless and whose vocabulary is limited to “papa” and “maman” and those who can not say a word, but whose clothes, from the tiny hat to their walking-boots, with an accompanying trousseau containing a summer and winter automobile coat, goggles and all, might have been fashioned by a Worth. Not even in the public squares are the soldiers of France more immortalized than in the Passage Jouffroy. There are whole forts full of Germans ready to be blown to smithereens by the gallant advancing force of _Les Français_, and formidable cannons mounted on sanded ramparts with pill boxes containing enough ammunition for the most glorious of victories, to say nothing of the gorgeous _pièce de résistance_, the satin pantalooned _balanceur_ with violet eyes that close like an owl’s, who accomplishes the most difficult gymnastics by little fits and starts to the accompaniment in liquid tones of a music-box tearing through the overture of William Tell in waltz time.