Haussmann's renovation of Paris had many critics during his own time. Some were simply tired of the continuous construction. The French historian Léon Halévy wrote in 1867, "the work of Monsieur Haussmann is incomparable. Everyone agrees. Paris is a marvel, and M. Haussmann has done in fifteen years what a century could not have done. But that's enough for the moment. There will be a 20th century. Let's leave something for them to do." Others regretted that he had destroyed a historic part of the city. The brothers Goncourt condemned the avenues that cut at right angles through the center of the old city, where "one could no longer feel in the world of Balzac." Jules Ferry, the most vocal critic of Haussmann in the French parliament, wrote: "We weep with our eyes full of tears for the old Paris, the Paris of Voltaire, of Desmoulins, the Paris of 1830 and 1848, when we see the grand and intolerable new buildings, the costly confusion, the triumphant vulgarity, the awful materialism, that we are going to pass on to our descendants."