1936 On the Continent

fairly violent earthquake shock, while on the other hand the more intimate life of your neighbours becomes an open book to you. After all, people with a clear conscience need have no secrets from the world. As regards the wall-paper, it is populated either by flowers or by birds in all colours of the rainbow, so that you see them even when your eyes are shut; but if you suffer from insomnia you may amuse yourself, gratis and for nothing, by counting the birds or by discovering the profiles of old men or the outlines of strange beasts in the rest of the design, as you do with “nigger in the pile” sort of puzzles. The most charming thing in small hotels is the telephone, which is installed in the concierge’s cage; when the tenant is rung up by a friend he may dash down the dark winding staircase from the third or sixth floor, only to find that the line has been disconnected.
    So much for the small hotels. As we have said, they have their own poetry of discomfort, of ease and unease, which soon ensnares and fascinates the tenant, so that heoften remains for years in the same impossibly tiny room in which he at first thought he could not bear it another day. This, too, is part of the magic effect of Paris.
    Of boarding-houses (
Pensions de Famille
) there are fewer in Paris than in other large European cities, perhaps mainly because the sacred tradition of restaurant meals is too strong and too attractive to the foreigner as well for him to tie himself down to boarding-house meals. Nevertheless, there is a number of good boarding-houses in Paris. Prices are from about 10s. per day for full board-residence. However, as we have said, it is rather fun to feed at restaurants, and unless you prefer quiet or must avoid restaurant food for dietetic reasons, you are advised not to go to a boarding-house.
    Flat hunting for a long stay in Paris is, in view of all this, no simple problem. It is best to read the newspaper advertisements (
Intransigeant, Paris-Midi
and
Paris-Soir
daily contain a large selection of
Locations meublées
advertisements), but there is also an information bureau run for the benefit of tourists by the association of Paris hotel-keepers (La Centralisation Hôtelière Française, 4 Place Vendôme), where information
re
accommodation, prices, etc., of the individual hotels is supplied free of charge.

PARIS BY DAY
    It takes some time before the visitor is able to distinguish the various parts of Paris, the individual
quartiers
, according to their peculiarities, and—for his own orientation—to group them in a clearly surveyable manner.
    The first classification that automatically settles in the foreign visitor’s mind after the first few days is a differentiation between the North and South Poles of the city, that is to say, between Montmartre and Montparnasse. Each lies on a hill, a
mont
, and they are connected by a main artery of the Metro, which is known as the “Nord-Sud” line.
    Then, gradually, the centre of the city becomes crystallised in the mind as a complete whole. It forms an almost rectangular square block, bounded at the upper edge by the great boulevards and at the lower end by the Rue de Rivoli, from the Place de la Concorde to Chatelet.
    An extension of this city block, like an arm extended towards the west, is the Champs Elysées and the Quartier de l’Etoile, the smartest part of Paris. And, finally, approximately between the city and Montparnasse, between the centre and the “South Pole,” lie the Quartier Latin and the Quartier du Luxembourg, the strongholds of the students and intellectuals.
    Each of these five centres becomes associated in the foreign visitor’s mind with a definite, specific function. The centre and the first part of the Champs Elysées is linked with shopping. The region comprising the upper part of the Champs Elysées and the Etoile is the place for afternoon walks, for loitering aimlessly, for lounging in the big cafés at
apéritif
-time, for car parades to the Bois. The two poles, Montmartre and Montparnasse, are the centres of the night life of Paris. The Montmartre, in particular, does not exist for the foreign visitor by day. Finally, there is the Quartier Latin—well, here you meet, at the students’ cafés round the Sorbonne, the type of people who are very intellectual but very impecunious, who withdraw to their beloved
quartier
as a snail withdraws into its shell and will not be lured to the “smart” districts on any account.
    That,