n town, a human skeleton to enrich
our prehistoric museums, sometimes a shoal of sardines or cod. These
splendid and timely reserves come in very handy for replenishing our
bill of fare. But the chief fascination of such adventurous exploration
is the sense of the boundless and the everlasting, of the unfathomable
and the changeless by which one is arrested and overwhelmed in these
bottomless depths. The savour of this silence and solitude, of this
profound peace, the sequel to so many tempests, of this almost starless
gloaming and twilight with its fleeting gleams, reposes the eye after
our underground illuminations. I will not speak of the surprises which
the hand of man has lavished there. At the moment when one least expects
it one sees the submarine tunnel along which one is gliding, enlarged
beyond all measure and transformed into a vast hall in which the fancy
of our sculptors has found full play, a temple of vast dimensions with
transparent pillars, with walls of enthralling beauty that the eye in
ecstasy attempts to fathom. That is often the trysting place of friends
and lovers, and the excursion begun in dreamy loneliness is continued in
loving companionship.

But we have wandered long enough in these halls of mysteries. Let us
return to our cities. One would look, by the bye, in vain for a city of
lawyers there, or even, for a court of justice. There is no more arable
land and therefore no more lawsuits about property or ancient rights.
There are no more walls, and therefore no more lawsuits about party
walls. As for felonies and misdemeanours, we do not know exactly why,
but it is an obvious fact that with the spread of the cult of art they
have disappeared as by enchantment, while formerly the progress of
industrial life had tripled their numbers in half a century.

Man in becoming a town dweller has become really human. From the time
that all sorts of trees and beasts, of flowers and insects no longer
interpose between men, and all sorts of vulgar wants no longer hinder
the progress of the truly human faculties, every one seems to be born
well-bred, just as every one is born a sculptor or musician, philosopher
or poet, and speaks the most correct language with the purest accent. An
indescribable courtesy, skilled to charm without falsehood, to please
without obsequiousness, the most free from fawning one has ever seen, is
united to a politeness which has at heart the feeling, not of a social
hierarchy to