The Palais Royal is certainly the temple of animal
gratification, the paradise of gastronomes.
The officers are indulging in
all sorts of luxury, revelling in Champaign and Burgundy, in all the
pleasures of the belly, as well as in iis quae sub ventre sunt. 'Twill be
a famous harvest for the restaurateurs and for the Cyprians who parade up
and down the Arcades, sure of a constant succession of suitors. In fact,
whatever be the taste of a man, whether sensual or intellectual or both, he
can gratify himself here without moving out of the precincts of the Palais
Royal. Here are cafes, restaurants, shops of all kinds whose display of
clocks, jewellery, stuffs, silks, merchandize from all parts of the world,
is most brilliant and dazzling; here you find reading-rooms where
newspapers, reviews and pamphlets of all tongues, nations and languages are
to be met with; here are museums of paintings, statues, plans in relief,
cosmoramas; here are libraries, gaming houses, houses of fair reception;
cellars where music, dancing and all kinds of orgies are carried on;
exhibitions of all sorts, learned pigs, dancing dogs, military canary
birds, hermaphrodites, giants, dwarf jugglers from Hindostan, catawbas from
America, serpents from Java, and crocodiles from the Nile. Here, so
Kotzebue has calculated, you may go through all the functions of life in
one day and end it afterwards should you be so inclined. You may eat,
drink, sleep, bathe, go to the Cabinet d'aisance, walk, read, make love,
game and, should you be tired of life, you may buy powder and ball or opium
to hasten your journey across Styx; or should you desire a more classic
exit, you may die like Seneca opening your veins in a bath.
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