introduced that of
electricity. This new method of illumination appeared in 1876, and in
the following year the Avenue de l'Opera was lit up by the Jablochkoff
system. In England, the use of electricity for lighting public streets
and dwellings was inaugurated in the town of Godalming in 1881; and in
America, in New York, in 1882. The Place du Carrousel followed the
Avenue de l'Opera, using sixteen Mersanne lights; experiments were made
in the Parc Monceau with fourteen arc lights, and in the Parc des
Buttes-Chaumont with fifty arc lights and seventy-nine incandescent.
The tragic burning of the Opera-Comique, in May, 1887, gave a great
impulse to the adoption of the new method in preference to the use of
gas, and the city north of the Seine was divided into five _secteurs_,
each furnished by its own electrical company. This method still
prevails, the number of secteurs having been increased to seven, one for
the left bank of the river, and the different companies hold their
concessions for the space of eighteen years. The unit of measurement is
the _hectowatt-heure_, the price of which ranges from ten to fifteen
centimes, whilst in other cities, according to statistics of November,
1897, it ranged from five to seven centimes in Brussels, from six to
seven in London, and at about seven and a half in Berlin.

[Illustration: AN "IMMORTAL" AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE INSTITUT DE FRANCE.
After a drawing by Emile Bayard.]

This excessive price has had the natural result of curtailing the use of
electricity as an illuminator; and the usual thrifty habits of the
French householder and municipality contribute to make the capital
anything but a well-lighted city at night,--contrary to the general
impression. The stranger who leaves the main boulevards and enters any
of the minor streets, even such a wide and important one as the
Boulevard Saint-Germain, is struck with the village darkness of these
thoroughfares. Not only is there no other means of illumination
generally but the street-lamps burning gas, which are sufficiently
widely spaced,--and, in the case of the boulevard just mentioned, masked
by trees,--but all the house-fronts are tightly closed and as black as
night. One may cross the Place Vendome, five minutes from the Opera, in
the middle of the evening in the middle of the season, and have barely
light enough to avoid other pedestrians. All around the great circle the
houses show no gleam of light in their windows, with tw