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Is the loiterer right, when, moved by the sight of the soft light above the Seine, he whispers silently:
" Paris sky is starting to imitate Corot"? Is it true that Paris only exists in the minds of the painters, in the pen of the writers or in the heart of all those who walk thorough these distinct inside villages, only for the pleasure to sniff the typical odours of these areas?
Or maybe it are the lovers and "amoureux" who are the real owners of this city and does a beautiful house belong more to the one who sings or write a poetry about than the inhabitant of it? Was Paris only born when the first poet dedicated its first rhymes to it? Is the real Paris that of the street?
The Parisian street is many-sided, capricious, different, multi-coloured or severe. You have in Paris warm, welcoming, lovable streets, where we feel immediately home, because their sizes match our state of mind and because their worn out side walks looks so inviting. Then you have the scary ones, cold house rows one next to the other, with pretentious facades looking down upon us with unfriendly eyes and fixed eyebrows. There are scandalous, disfigured and insulting streets you only visit secretly because you have to for whatever the reason and where you are uneasy someone might recognize you; and then you have the streets to which you should say "VOUS", the polite form of you, where you feel that you are "somebody", even if you are nobody, streets of good company, where you like to show off in the hope to be noticed.
You have sad streets where light-this special Parisian light---refuses to penetrate and others who seem to have a sunbath every day. Some streets are turned southwards and others support a chilly northern wind. A severe difference.
There are streets always clean and spic span, others always dirty only beautiful on certain hours of the night when the moon shines about their roofs.
There are streets starting in wealth and ending in misery, streets stopping suddenly, having no exit. They call them dead-end streets. Common people call them "cul-de sacs".
Proud streets have showy names of field marshals, prominent politicians or illustrious financiers and bucolic streets named after artists like Mozart, Berlioz, Boileau or Bellini.
There are endless long, meagre and extended streets. Others where you know every house and stone and others you swear you will never set a foot. Streets you adore and streets you hate.
Balzac was right: Paris is a creature, a living organism, as living as the inhabitants. With their good and bad properties, their good or bad conscience. their joy, sorrow, exaltation, sensuality. Their melancholy......
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