The light of Paris

'I dare say, moreover,' she pursued with an interested gravity, 'that I do, that we all so here, run too much to mere eye. But how can it be helped? We're all looking at each other — and in the light of Paris one sees what things resemble. That's what the light of Paris always seems to show. It's the fault of the light of Paris — dear old light!'
      'Dear Old Paris!' little Bilham echoed.
      'Everything, everyone shows,' Miss Barrace went on.
      'But for what they really are?' Strether asked.
      'Oh, I like your Boston 'reallys'!  But sometimes — yes.'

From The Ambassadors, by Henry James,

quoted in Paris to the Moon, by Adam Gopnik

{The painting is Boulevard Montmarte, by Camille Pissaro, found here}