America, serpents from Java, and crocodiles from the Nile.  Here, so Kotzebue has calculated, you may go through all the functions of life in one day and end it afterwards should you be so inclined.  You may eat, drink, sleep, bathe, go to the Cabinet d’aisance, walk, read, make love, game and, should you be tired of life, you may buy powder and ball or opium to hasten your journey across Styx; or should you desire a more classic exit, you may die like Seneca opening your veins in a bath.  Deep play goes forward day and night, and I verily believe there are some persons in Paris who never quit these precincts.  The restaurants and cafes are most brilliantly fitted up.  One, Le Cafe des Mille Colonnes, so called from the reflection of the columns in the mirrors with which the wainscoat is lined, boasts of a limonadiere of great beauty.  She is certainly a fine woman, dresses very well, as indeed most French women do, and has a remarkably fine turned arm which she takes care to display on all occasions.  I do not, however, perceive much animation in her; she always appears the same, nor has she made any more impression on me—­tho’ I am of a very susceptible nature in this particular—­than a fine statue or picture would do.  There she sits on a throne and receives the hommage and compliments of most of the visitors and the money of all, which seems to please her most, for she receives the compliments which are paid her with the utmost sang-froid and indifference, and the money she takes especial care to count.  English troops, conjointly with the National Guard, do duty at the entrance of the Palais Royal from the Rue St Honore; and it became necessary to have a strong guard to keep the peace, as frequent disputes take place between the young men of the Capital and the Prussian officers, against whom the French are singularly inveterate.

The French, when left to themselves, are very peaceable in their pleasures and the utmost public decorum is observed; their sobriety contributes much to this; but if there were in London an establishment similar to that of the Palais Royal, it would become a perfect pandemonium and would require an army to keep the peace.  The French police keep a very sharp look-out on all political offences, but are more indulgent towards all moral ones, as long as public decorum is not infringed, and then it is severely punished.  But they have none of that censoriousness or prying spirit in France which is so common in England to hunt out and criticise the private vices of their neighbours, which, in my opinion, does not proceed from any real regard for virtue, but from a fanatical, jealous, envious, and malignant spirit.  Those vice-hunters never have the courage to attack a man of wealth and power; but a poor artisan or labourer, who buys a piece of meat after twelve o’clock on Saturday night, or a glass of spirits during church-time on Sunday, is termed a Sabbath-breaker and imprisoned without mercy.