Palais-Royal. – “A unique point on the globe. Visit London, Amsterdam, Madrid, Vienna, you will see nothing to match it: a prisoner could live there without boredom, and only consider freedom at the end of several years … It is called the capital of Paris. Everything is found there; but set a young man of twenty years there, with fifty thousand livres a year, he would want no more, he could no longer go out of this place of faerie; he would become a Renaud in this palace of Armide; and if this hero lost his time there and almost his glory, our young man will lose his health, and maybe his fortune: it is only there that he could play henceforth; everywhere else he would become bored. This enchanted sojourn is a little luxurious city, enclosed in a large one: it is the temple of the voluptue, where the brilliant vices have banned even the ghost of modesty: there is no tavern in the world more graciously depraved; one laughs there, and it is innocence which still blushes.”
S. MERCIER, Tableau de Paris, 1783
* Count Almaviva is Figaro’s employer, who is trying to seduce Suzanne, Figaro’s bride-to-be.
Mimic of Modes 