The crowds in the streets, the lights in the shops and balconies,
the elegance, variety, and beauty of their decorations, the number
of the theatres, the brilliant cafes with their windows thrown up
high and their vivacious groups at little tables on the pavement,
the light and glitter of the houses turned as it were inside out,
soon convince me that it is no dream; that I am in Paris, howsoever
I got there. I stroll down to the sparkling Palais Royal, up the
Rue de Rivoli, to the Place Vendome. As I glance into a print-shop
window, Monied Interest, my late travelling companion, comes upon
me, laughing with the highest relish of disdain. ‘Here’s a
people!’ he says, pointing to Napoleon in the window and Napoleon
on the column. ‘Only one idea all over Paris! A monomania!’
Humph! I THINK I have seen Napoleon’s match? There was a statue,
when I came away, at Hyde Park Corner, and another in the City, and
a print or two in the shops.
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Dickens, Charles – Reprinted Pieces
I walk up to the Barriere de l’Etoile, sufficiently dazed by my
flight to have a pleasant doubt of the reality of everything about
me; of the lively crowd, the overhanging trees, the performing
dogs, the hobby-horses, the beautiful perspectives of shining
lamps: the hundred and one enclosures, where the singing is, in
gleaming orchestras of azure and gold, and where a star-eyed Houri
comes round with a box for voluntary offerings. So, I pass to my
hotel, enchanted; sup, enchanted; go to bed, enchanted; pushing
back this morning (if it really were this morning) into the
remoteness of time, blessing the South-Eastern Company for
realising the Arabian Nights in these prose days, murmuring, as I
wing my idle flight into the land of dreams, ‘No hurry, ladies and
gentlemen, going to Paris in eleven hours. It is so well done,
that there really is no hurry!’
THE DETECTIVE POLICE
WE are not by any means devout believers in the old Bow Street
Police. To say the truth, we think there was a vast amount of
humbug about those worthies. Apart from many of them being men of
very indifferent character, and far too much in the habit of
consorting with thieves and the like, they never lost a public
occasion of jobbing and trading in mystery and making the most of
themselves. Continually puffed besides by incompetent magistrates
anxious to conceal their own deficiencies, and hand-in-glove with
the penny-a-liners of that time, they became a sort of
superstition. Although as a Preventive Police they were utterly
ineffective, and as a Detective Police were very loose and
uncertain in their operations, they remain with some people a
superstition to the present day.
On the other hand, the Detective Force organised since the
establishment of the existing Police, is so well chosen and
trained, proceeds so systematically and quietly, does its business
in such a workmanlike manner, and is always so calmly and steadily
engaged in the service of the public, that the public really do not
know enough of it, to know a tithe of its usefulness. Impressed
with this conviction, and interested in the men themselves, we
represented to the authorities at Scotland Yard, that we should be
glad, if there were no official objection, to have some talk with
the Detectives. A most obliging and ready permission being given,
a certain evening was appointed with a certain Inspector for a
social conference between ourselves and the Detectives, at The
Household Words Office in Wellington Street, Strand, London. In
consequence of which appointment the party ‘came off,’ which we are
about to describe. And we beg to repeat that, avoiding such topics
as it might for obvious reasons be injurious to the public, or
disagreeable to respectable individuals, to touch upon in print,
our description is as exact as we can make it.
The reader will have the goodness to imagine the Sanctum Sanctorum
of Household Words. Anything that best suits the reader’s fancy,
will best represent that magnificent chamber. We merely stipulate
for a round table in the middle, with some glasses and cigars
arranged upon it; and the editorial sofa elegantly hemmed in