Why is it called “gay Paree?” I have no idea. If you look you can see the open soul of the city anywhere along the Seine from the Quai de Javel to the Quai Saint-Bernard. It is there, along the banks of the river and among the bridges, that you touch the spirit of Paris, and while that spirit is not a tragic one, surely it has little to do with gaiety. Rather, it bears witness to an essential consciousness of the need in life for beauty, and to an understanding of the use of proportion and harmony in the achievement of beauty. It provides the artist with heartening, ever-present proof that man-made beauty is attainable, and does so in such a natural fashion that when one thinks of the banks of the Seine one thinks simultaneously of artists, for the two belong together.