After 70 Years

A silken ribbon, taut and quivering, stretched last week across the end of the Boulevard Haussmann. Blue-capped Parisian policemen held back a crowd . . .

At last a plump, genial old man in a frock coat and a tall hat arrived. He took a pair of gold scissors from a pretty girl and began portentously to cut the ribbon.

"Regarde, ma petite!" said a svelte woman in the crowd to her fur-clad infant. "That is the President of France who dedicates the opening after 70 years of the magnificent Boulevard Haussmann."

Laughing, eager, the crowd surged forward, everyone anxious to be among the first to tread the final section of the boulevard begun under Napoleon III by his great Prefect of the Seine, Baron Haussmann, just 70 years ago. The new sector, only a few dozen yards long, at last connects the Boulevard Haussmann with the Grands Boulevards, and makes a single magnificent thoroughfare, stretching continuously from the Place de la Republique to the Place de 1'Etoile.