1936 On the Continent

is one of the most amusing things Paris has to offer. However, you will have to forget about the romantic illusion that you may discover among the grimy lumber a genuine Rembrandt or Picasso. That really used to happen on the Marché de Puce formerly; but to-day the antique dealers, art dealers and their agents are far too keen and alert to miss such bargains, and the market dealers also know how to conceal behind an innocent expression a great deal of expert knowledge. However, it is still an iron rule of good manners in this market to offer a third of the price you are asked to pay, and then come to terms at about half.
    Having visited the “Flea Market,” you simply must not omit to patronise the big café of the Cité d’Occasions, the Ritz of beggars, second-hand dealers and the like. You sit on a rough wooden bench and order either
frites
or
fritures
at the unit price of 30 sous, with half a litre of Vin Rosé, and enjoy the rare pleasure of studying types and typical scenes on the spot. At the same time, you are advised to take a little bicarbonate of soda after your meal at this café.
    What the “Flea Market” represents in the field of discarded lumber, is embodied by the
bouquinistes
in the intellectual world. The
bouquinistes
are the second-hand shops of the intellect, and strolling and browsing among the billions of printed pages can be an adventurous pastime. Of course, in this case too, you must renounce all hope of discovering a genuine Daumier or a particularly valuable etching and securing possession of it for a few francs: butthese shops are still a veritable mine of precious finds and curiosities. You can still purchase leather-bound classics at low prices, as well as early prints, atlases and etchings of all kinds. The vast second-hand and remainder stores, where you can buy works which were fashionable and popular yesterday but are completely forgotten to-day, symbolise the transient nature of the things of the spirit. The paper jungle of detective novels is a veritable Eldorado to those who like this kind of literature. There are more murders, poisonings, stabbings and miraculous escapes to the square yard in these places than even the most sensation hungry reader can digest. And side by side with death there is Love, books with more or less unambiguous frontispieces which the foreigner inspects furtively and with a blush, but which the Parisian browses in with frank delight. By the way, there are special shops for such books and illustrations all over Paris.
The Parks
    The big Paris parks also provide some of the “minor pleasures.” Each of these places has a character of its own. The Parc Monceau is the typical “pitch” of the children of well-to-do middle-class families. If you spend half an hour in this park with open eyes you will observe the pale faces and listless expressions of the middle-class children of Paris, how carefully they are smothered in clothes in order to guard their bodies from an access of fresh air, and how intolerably unpleasant the governesses are.
    The Buttes Chaumont is a working-class park which is particularly crowded on Sundays. The Tuilleries, with its magnificent view of the Louvre and the perspective of the Champs Elysées, is a typical city island—a few cubic yards of ozone in a sea of petrol fumes. The Luxembourg Garden we have already mentioned. The Bois de Boulogne is no longer a park, but—as its name shows—a proper wood. In the morning you can go boating there or you can feed the swans, and at midday you may lunch at the delightful island restaurant. At night, however, walking in the Bois is a somewhat delicate matter. It goes without saying that the silent avenues exercise a magnetic attraction on lovers who lack normal facilities for courting, and if they happen to own a car the attraction extends to thevehicle as well. Unfortunately, the Bois also attracts those elements who derive profit from these idylls in various ways.
    Opposite the main entrance of the Bois, near the Porte Maillot, lies the Luna Park, a paradise of innocent amusements on a fine summer evening. Here, at last, technical progress is divorced from all constraint and is exclusively in the service of nonsensical fun, nonsensical fun with many subtle tricks. There is the scenic railway, the laughing cabinet, the haunted house and other things that appeal to the child in grown-ups. But there are also great terraces and dance halls, gay throngs and many girls and,