The Arcades Project - Operi

cabriolets for rent in the Palais during the day. But their numbers diminish as one
moves further away, in the dty, from the Palais-Royal." J. F. Benzenhcrg, Briefe
geschrieben auf einer Reise nach Paris (Dortmund, 1805), vol. 1, pp. 261, 263.
The author estimates the nmnlwr ofj'emrnes perdues at ""around 10,000"; " before
the Revolution, according to a police report, they numhered 28,OOO" (p. 261).
[03a,2]
'Vice had accomplished its (ustomary task, for her as for t.he others. It had refined
and relldered desirable the brazen ugliness of her face. Although the f,rirl had lost
none of the suburban quaintness of her origins, she had become-wit.h her showy
jewelry and her physical attractions ostentatiously worked up through creams­
capahle of stimulating and tempting the bored appetites and dulled sensibilities
that are enlivened only hy the provocations of makeup and the swirl of lavish
gowns." J . -K . Huysmans, Croquis parisiens (Paris, 1886). p. 57 (,"L'Amhulan,e").
[03a,3]
I,I,It is useless to expect that a bourgeois could ever succeed in comprehending the
phenomena of the distribution of wealth. For, with the development of mechanical
production, property is depersonalized and arrayed in the impersonal collective
form of the joint stock company, whose shares are finally caught up in the whirlpool
of the Stock Exchange . ... They are ... lost hy one, won by another-indeed,
in a manner so reminiscent of gamhling that the huying and selling of stocks
is actually known as 'playing' the market. Modern economic development as a
whole tends more aIHI more to transform capitalist society into a giant international
gambling house, where the hourgeois wins and loses capital in consequence
of events which remain unknown to him . ... The inexplicable' is enthroned in
bourgeois society as in a gambling hall . . . . Successes and failures, thus arising
from causes that are unanticipated, generally Ultintellirihle, and seemingly dependent
on chance, predispose the hourgeois to the gambler's frame of mind . ...
The capitalist whose fortune is tied up in stocks and bonds, which are suhject to
variations in market value and yield for which he does not understand the causes,
is a professional gamhler. The gmnhler, however, ... is a snpremely superstitious
being. The hahitues of gamhling casinos always possess magic formulas to (onjure
the Fates. One will mutter a prayer to Saint Anthony of Padua 01' some other spit'lt
of the heavens; another will place his bet only if a ctrtain color has won; while a
t.hird holds a rahhit's foot in his left hand; and so on. The inexplicable in society
envelops the hourgeois, as the inexplicahle in nature the savage." Paul Lafargue,
"Die Ursachen des Gottesglauhens," Die nene Zeh, 24