re are libraries, gaming houses, houses of fair reception;
cellars where music, dancing and all kinds of orgies are carried on;
exhibitions of all sorts, learned pigs, dancing dogs, military canary
birds, hermaphrodites, giants, dwarf jugglers from Hindostan, catawbas from
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