"Andromache
- my thoughts are turned to you. That narrow stream,
that unworthy, sad mirror that long ago resplended with
the awesome majesty of your widow's grief,
that new, false Simois swelled by your tears,
has suddenly enriched my fertile
memory,
as I was crossing the new Carrousel.
The Paris of old is there no more (a city's shape changes,
alas
more swiftly than a human heart);
Only in my mind's eye can
I see those makeshift booths,
those piles of rough-hewn capitals and pillars,
the weeds, the massive blocks of stone stained by the puddles green,
the jumble of cheap bric-a-brac glittering
in shopfronts."
"Return from the Courses de la Marche: 'The dust exceeded all expectations. The elegant folk back from the races are virtually encrusted; they remind you of Pompeii. They have to be exhumed with the help of a brush, if not a pickaxe." H. de Pene, Paris intime (1859). Konvolut D3a, 5.
"As dust, rain takes its revenge on the arcades.-Under Louis Philippe, dust settled even on the revolutions." Konvolut D1a, 1.
"Plush as dust collector. Mystery of dustmotes playing in the sunlight. Dust and the 'best room'. 'Shortly after 1840, fully padded furniture appears in France, and with it the upholstered style becomes dominant.' Max von Boehn, Die Mode im XIX. Jahrhundert, vol 2 (1907). Other arrangements to stir up dust: the trains of dresses." Konvolut D1a, 3.
