The vision rousseauist of Paris is fundamentally critical - the capital ruins the country, it concentrates the moral and political corruption of the time:
“It is said that the town of Paris is worth a province with king de France; me I believe that it costs some to him several, that it is in more than one connection that Paris is nourished by the provinces, and that most their incomes pour in this city and remain there, without never turning over to the people nor to the king”.
(Emile)

Paris ruins happiness that Emile and Sophie managed to build:
“How you to speak the two years that we passed in this fatal city, and from the cruel effect which made on my heart and my fate this stay poisoned”. (Emile)

However, of the fact even of the luxury and the inequalities which it exacerbates, the capital can only form the taste of Emile:
“It does not take place there perhaps now organized on the ground where the general taste is worse than in Paris. However it is in this capital that the good taste is cultivated, and it appears little of books estimated in Europe whose author was not to be formed in Paris (...) If you have a spark of genius will spend one year to Paris. Soon you will be all that you can be, or you will be never nothing”.