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CHAPTER X

THE PARISIAN LECTURE AND SALON

In no city in the world is the public lecturer so popular as in Paris. The Conférence is almost a national institution, like the salon and the foyer. I will frankly confess that I find the average Parisian lecturer overrated, and the whole thing sadly overdone. In the winter and spring there are a great deal too many lectures, on too many subjects, but that is the way the Parisian, above all, Parisian woman, likes to take a dose of culture. When the season opens in January, you will generally find that your friends have subscribed somewhere or other for a course of lectures—six or twelve. Sometimes they take place in the lecture-hall of the Rue Caumartin, or in a lecture-hall in the Rue Boissy d'Anglas, or at the Societé Géographique on the Boulevard St. Germain. Then there are the lectures of the Sorbonne, or the Collége de France, where the salaried professors of the State lecture, and a host of stray lectures