The wing collar, and the wig, and the silk breeches, the wonderful new gloves in the most delicate lemon yellow. It was, if he was completely honest with himself (and he did not want to be), a bit too hot for this new striped blue-and-rose-colored coat, made of taffeta and satin, and the silk faille waistcoat embroidered with a scene of birds and cherubs. Magnus had animated one of his magnificent Chinese fans, and it flapped ineffectively at him, barely stirring the breeze. It was brutally hot inside his cabriolet as it bumped its way along. Magnus was taking an unfamiliar route, one that took him through quite a rough patch of Paris.
The smells today, however, were a bit strong. It all smelled of life-life in every form and degree. Paris was nothing if not alive-the Seine pumping along like a great artery, the vessels of the wider streets, narrowing down to the tiniest alleys. That heady whiff of a bakery might be followed by an unexpected flush of gardenias in a garden, which gave way to the iron-rich pong of a slaughterhouse. But these were punctuated by other odors, and the odors would shift rapidly from street to street, or building to building. It smelled of people and all the things that people produce (this does not refer to art or culture but to the baser things that were dumped out of windows in buckets). This was surprising, because on summer mornings Paris smelled of cheese that had sat in the sun all day, and fish and the less desirable parts of fish.
There was a smell to Paris in the summer mornings that Magnus enjoyed.
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