Paris Again

The mail arrives at my little Left Bank hotel four times a day (except Sunday) and sometimes five times a day. The subways run quietly and on time on their rubber wheels into stations that are clean and orderly and often a work of art as is the Metro station at the Louvre. The parks are ablaze with flowers; the cafés are full to overflowing (as they should be) ; the restaurants (the low and moderate-priced ones, those with a prix fixe of from ten to fifteen new francs, tout compris) are regaining the quality I thought they were about to lose when I last visited the most beautiful city in the world some three years ago.

With all this Paris has gone all out in providing a spectacle of light and air and sound and water which it calls the Féerie des Tuileries. Frankly, I lack the gift to describe this evocation of “fairyland,” except to note that it is held every evening from 21 to 24 hours in the beautiful gardens of the Tuileries—from the Louvre to the Jeu de Paume—in which all the trees and flowers and statues are illuminated; excellent concerts provided; and all of it topped off with a water and fireworks ballet which starts classically to the Water Music of Handel, the grand fountain of the Concorde cascading its jets high into the air in a dazzling display of color. All this reaches a climax when the sky over Paris is lit up by a ravishing display of pin-wheels and rockets soaring high into the night, the music having changed to a more robust rendition of Rossini’s William Tell Overture, a Strauss Polka and an Offenbach Can-Can. Finis—and you head for bus or Metro which, if you are fortunate, will have ceased running (most of them stop at midnight) and you can begin a leisurely walk “home” along the cleanest, if most deserted, and safest streets in all the world.

MG

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Max Geltman

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The mail arrives at my little Left Bank hotel four times a day (except Sunday) and sometimes five times a day. The subways run quietly and on time on their rubber wheels into stations that are clean and orderly and often a work of art as is the Metro station at the Louvre. The parks are ablaze with flowers; the cafés are full to overflowing (as they should be) ; the restaurants (the low and moderate-priced ones, those with a prix fixe of from ten to fifteen new francs, tout compris) are regaining the quality I thought they were about to lose when I last visited the most beautiful city in the world some three years ago.

With all this Paris has gone all out in providing a spectacle of light and air and sound and water which it calls the Féerie des Tuileries. Frankly, I lack the gift to describe this evocation of “fairyland,” except to note that it is held every evening from 21 to 24 hours in the beautiful gardens of the Tuileries—from the Louvre to the Jeu de Paume—in which all the trees and flowers and statues are illuminated; excellent concerts provided; and all of it topped off with a water and fireworks ballet which starts classically to the Water Music of Handel, the grand fountain of the Concorde cascading its jets high into the air in a dazzling display of color. All this reaches a climax when the sky over Paris is lit up by a ravishing display of pin-wheels and rockets soaring high into the night, the music having changed to a more robust rendition of Rossini’s William Tell Overture, a Strauss Polka and an Offenbach Can-Can. Finis—and you head for bus or Metro which, if you are fortunate, will have ceased running (most of them stop at midnight) and you can begin a leisurely walk “home” along the cleanest, if most deserted, and safest streets in all the world.