And we go on making our little plans, building our ships and making
loud brags of our armies, and our skill, and our prowess both by
land and sea, and our amazing importance to ourselves and to
others,--which importance has reached such a height at the present
day as to make of us a veritable spectacle for Olympian laughter,--
and we draw out our little sums of life from the Eternal exchequer,
and add them up and try to obtain the highest interest for them,
always forgetting to calculate that in making up the sum total, that
mysterious "Unknown Quantity" will have to come in, and (un less it
has been taken into due counting from the first) will be a figure
likely to swamp the whole banking business. And in this particular
phase of speculation and exchange, Paris has long been playing a
losing game. So steadily has she lost, in honour, in prestige, in
faith, in morals, in justice, in honesty and in cleanly living, that
it does not seem possible she can ever retrieve herself. Her men are
dissolute,--her women shameless--her youth of both sexes depraved,--
her laws are corrupt--her arts de cadent--her religion dead. What
next can be expected of her?--or rather to what extent will Destiny
permit her to go before the bolt of destruction falls? "Thus far,
and no farther" has ever been the Principle of Nature--and Paris has
almost touched the "Thus far.
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