Age

of Discomfort

The modern world inevitably got around to attacking the most comforting, if not the most beautiful, of Parisian landmarks: the public urinals, known as vespasiann (after Emperor Vespasian. A.D. 9-79. who established a tax on such establishments, and when criticized for his source of revenue, replied: "Money has no smell."). In an earlier day. the vespasiennes were a mark of social progress for a neighborhood and a token of masculine democracy. They have also become a quaint sight for tourists and a source of endless jokes. Last week, as the Paris municipal council debated their continuance, the pissoirs got an eloquent defense from Councilor Rene Fayssat.

Were not the vespasiennes reproduced in "innumerable" impressionist masterpieces? "To say that they were very beautiful would be to lie. To say that they were very ugly would also be to lie. They simply were, and we asked no more of them." Warned Fayssat: "We are afflicted in 1961 with the same needs as the old guards of the empire, the musketeers of Louis XIII. the legionnaires of Caesar, and Cro-Magnon man." But the council heartlessly ruled that in the age of indoor plumbing, the vespasienne was outmoded. By 1963. the last one would be razed.

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