La Belle Epoque emerged in the last half of the nineteenth century from the dream and the reality of the grandiose plans of Napoleon Ill and Baron Haussmann for the transformation of Paris. Philippe Jullian, in his essay, defines the dates of the period as 1900 to 1914, but I feel very strongly that its spirit began to develop much earlier, and it is its spirit that we are in search of.
Paris was the center of the action. No city had ever been so well arranged to receive the world and, indeed, it did. Czars, emperors, kings, maharajahs, and princes; the gratin and the nouveaux riches; heiresses and Middle European bankers; anarchists and apaches-all the world rubbed shoulders and filed in and out of this splendid and glorious city.