The fine French tongue has been lost; the language illustrious foreigners like Leibniz, Frederick the Great, Ancillon, Humboldt, and Heine chose as the interpreter of their ideas – that wonderful language Goethe regretted never having written, that elegant idiom which nearly became Greek or Latin in the fifteenth century, Italian with Catherine de Medici, and Gascon under Heni IV – is now a horrible argot. Each specialist, forgetting that a language is finer in its action than in its accumulation, has created his own word to name his own thing. Botanists, natural historians, physicists, chemists, mathematicians have coined dreadful hybrids… Let them forget all about it! French is even lovelier in its poverty!

Jules Verne (1828-1905)
Novelist, Author of Paris in the 20th Century

“There are no women left; the species has vanished, like pug-dogs and megatheriums! I believe that there were indeed women in the very remote past; the ancient writers speak of them in quite formal terms; they even cited, as the most perfect specimen among them, the Parisienne. According to the old texts and prints of the period, she was a charming creature, unrivaled the world over…” “So you claim it is impossible to meet a true woman in this day and age,” asked Michael. “Indeed, under ninety-five years of age, there are none. The last ones died with our grandmothers. However…” “Oh, there’s a however?”… “Such things can be met with in the Faubourg Saint-Germain; in this one little corner of our enormous Paris, that rare plant, the puella desiderata, as your professor would say, is cultivated, but only here.” … “So,” replied Michael, smiling ironically, “you persist in this opinion that woman is a vanished race.” … “My son, the great moralist of the nineteenth century already foresaw this catastrophe. Balzac, who knew something about the subject, suggests as much in his famous letter to Stendhal: Woman, he says, is Passion, Man is Action, and it is for this reason that man adores woman. Well, they are both action now, and as a consequence there are no longer any women in France.”

Jules Verne (1828-1905)
Novelist, Author of Paris in the 20th Century