Improvements in Paris.
--Externally, the palatial dwellings which have been erected in the last few years are vastly more elegant than the homely constructions which they have supplanted; but, despite their stately fronts, plate-glass windows, wide marble stairways, lofty ceilings, and profuse ornamentations, they are entirely deficient in the comfort which the Paristans like as well as other people. Hundreds of quiet citizens, many of whom have passed half their lives in one residence, are constantly receiving notice to quit tenements which are to be demolished, and are compelled to seek quarters elsewhere. Numerous families who have hitherto paid rents ranging from one to three thousand franc per annum, for commodious and suitable apartments, now ascertain to their consternation that the same amount of space, in a newly flushed ‘"palace,"’ cannot be obtained for less than double, triple, and sometimes quadruple, the sum they have been accustomed to pay. In exchange for their snug quarters, on the second or third floor of a quiet house, with perhaps a bit of garden attached, in which the children are free to roll on the grass, they must procure rooms on the fourth or fifth story of a marble barrack, inhabited by a colony of tenants, with a list of Draconian ‘"regulations"’ affixed as conditions to the lease, among which are often such prohibitions as the following:No flower-pots to be placed in the windows.
No carpets to be shaken after 10 A. M.
No water to be carried up stairs after 9 A. M.
No marketing, groceries, or other household necessaries to be brought by shop men or errand boys after 10 A. M.
No dogs, cats, parrots, &c., to be kept by tenants.
Gas in the stairway turned off at 11 P. M., and tenants coming in after midnight to pay the concierge (house-porter) ten sons indemnity.
There is one stipulation made, a sine quanon by some landlords, which is much more extraordinary than any of those above cited. ‘"Children are prohibited"’ That is to say, if the family proposing to lease the apartments be not entirely composed of adults, it is refused admission If all the landlords in France should, in the plentitude of their tyranny, determine to adopt this singular clause in a business contract, the French Government would soon be able to furnish a plausible reason for the decrease in the population of the country.
