Although the reader will quickly make the discovery for himself, I should like here to emphasise the fact that this is a book about Paris and the Parisians written wholly from the outside, and containing only so much of that city and its citizens as a foreigner who has no French friends may observe on holiday visits.

I express elsewhere my indebtedness to a few French authors. I have also been greatly assisted in a variety of ways, but especially in the study of the older Paris streets, by my friend Mr. Frank Holford.

E. V. L.

NOTE

Since this new edition was prepared for the press the devastating theft of Leonardo da Vinci's "Monna Lisa" was perpetrated. Pages 81-87 therefore—describing that picture as one of the chief treasures of the Louvre—must change their tense to the past.

E. V. L.