A few days after the inauguration of the Universal Exhibition Edmond de Goncourt was dining with Zola, on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower:

« Up there, we were afforded a realization, beyond anything imaginable on ground level, of the greatness, the extent, the Babylonian immensity of Paris, with old buildings glowing in the light of the setting sun with the color of Roman stone and among the calm, sweeping lines of the horizon, the steep, jagged silhouette of Montmartre looking in the dusky sky like an illuminated ruin. »