Page 154 - HandbookMarch1

“In the eyes of the Parisians, who like routine in things but are changeable when it
comes to people, I committed two great wrongs. Over the course of 17 years I disturbed
their daily routines by turning Paris upside down; and they had to look at the same
face of the prefect in the Hôtel de Ville. These were two unforgivable complaints.”

Some of Haussmann’s harshest critics, including the politician and philosopher Jules
Simon, later changed their view of him: “He tried to make Paris a magnificent city and
he succeeded completely,” Simon wrote in 1882. “He introduced into his beautiful
capital trees and flowers, and populated it with statues.”