The electric boulevard has made night too obedient

At half past eleven on Rue Lepic, the lamplighter no longer pauses long enough to hear a chorus drift from the café-concert. He touches each globe, receives its small obedience, and moves on. The street brightens with admirable discipline, but the old intervals of shadow have begun to feel like a private language being taxed out of existence.

Progress has entered the hall in rose satin, but it insists the orchestra keep time like a factory clock.

A city can be legible and still lose its plot

Last winter I kept a notebook beside the zinc counter at Le Chat Blanc and marked every novelty announced before midnight: bicycle chains, pneumatic tubes, a telephone fitted behind a velvet curtain. Each promised speed, and each stole a little ceremony from the evening. Paris is not becoming less splendid; it is becoming splendid in a manner too easily inspected.