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THE eighteenth was a coffee-house century in London as well as Paris. During this nineteenth century the coffee-house has dropped out of London life. But in the French capital it has gone on thriving, and it—or the beerhouse, its equivalent is to-day nothing less than a Parisian institution. Voltaire, Diderot, d'Alembert, and many others sat and ruled the empire of letters and, in thought and speech, con trolled the spirit of the time, over their cups of café noir at the Procope not much more than a hundred years ago. Men quite the peers, in talent at least, of a Diderot or a Voltaire, sit now. over "demis" of Munich beer at Pousset's in the Faubourg Montmartre, and pour forth wit, sarcasm, scorn, poetry, and transcendental philosophy (too often also grossness, meanness, malice, envy and all uncharitableness), which elements, mixed and beaten up together into a clotted heap," form

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a rich feast for the intellect.

Not long ago the editors of an American

magazine put into execution this idea. They united the cleverest of their contributors at a supposed unceremonious and entre soi repast, the while a stenographer sat behind a screen, fixing on his tablets for subsequent publication every flash of esprit and fancy, every side-light of experience, knowledge, feeling, emitted under the usual pendant- and après-dinner influences by the divers gifted guests. The result as it appeared in print was interesting-moderately. It is a pity that such a stenographic "chiel" could not be introduced some night at Pousset's between the hours of twelve and two or three. might very well be stowed away between the legs of one of those old oak tables in what has been called the coin des littérateurs. And then, though somewhat cramped, perhaps, with regard to the disposal of his own legs, presumably longer than the table's, the chiel would be situated admirably for the "taking" of those oft-quoted notes. More than "mod

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Flights of the neat little open cabs, with their gleaming fire-fly eyes, are in busy circulation, mostly occupied by couples. From the theatres, the café-chantants, the lounges from the Champs Elysées and from the Bois de Boulogne-every one is returning to eat and drink and be merry in the fashionable nocturnal restaurants and cafés.

Let us float along with the tide and look about us as we go.

Three illuminated points in the Rue Royale. Weber's, with its customary little knot of male and female swells in the upper room to the left, which they for years past have affected, no doubt because it is of too exiguous dimensions to admit of more than a picked and chosen few. Larue's, resort of a somewhat cheaper gayety, on the right-hand corner of the broad straight street opposite the Madeleine Church; the Madeleine showing, on this exquisite May night, so whitely pure and peaceful in the moonlight of Verlaine's verse:

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And on the other corner, Durand's, which always has been and always will be consummately "correct. Hill's,

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Down the boulevards. where will be gathered in less than two hours hence some of the worst characters of either sex that the Paris pavement supports. The Grand Café, not particularly decorous, and yet, rather particularly dull. Then, further on, past the portals of the Grand Hotel, the Café de la Paix. Divided, so to speak, into compartments like a train third class, the room at the back, where persons of the category termed expressively "riff-raff" play at cards with much noise for little money; second class, the front part, devoted to dominoes and the mildest refreshments; first class, the supper rooms on the Place de l'Opera, overflowing about this hour with a jeunesse dorée. To pursue this railway metaphor to the bitter end, the private rooms upstairs where people of a fairly smart description occasionally find themselves when they wish to vary their venue from Bignon's or the Maison d'Or, might be likened to Pullman cars. Yes, really," ja Paix" is not dissimilar from a rambling ramshackle train, making night hideous with its clatter and crowded to excess, as it pants its way along the rails of folly and vice, with travellers paying far too much for their tickets.

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Further down, other cafés. and coupés by the hundred line the sidewalk in front of them, and crowds of orderly consumers' sit at the little round-topped tables on the "terrace." Julien's, of the big and blazing order, highly"modern" in the worst sense debauchery at wholesale prices, a sort of "stores" for the dispensing of adulterated drinkables, eatables such as had best be left uneaten, and the rest. Immediately alongside of Julien's, in obedience perhaps to the law of contrasts, stands the oldestablished Napolitain,' one of the best of Paris cafés, where the company generally on a par with the ices and liqueurs. Close by the Vaudeville Theatre, opposite, is Lucien's, now Mercier's, which will always, one supposes, be better known by its official title of Café Américain. A name which embodies a satire upon a nation, great only in regard to the number of its population and to the extent of its territory, but which, with its obvious shortcomings, has perhaps done

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something to deserve that a café such as this should take its name.

Several hundreds of yards onward one arrives at the next batch of boulevard cafés. Why, in Paris, should cafés thus stick together in clusters ? One might imagine they fear solitude, and long wildly to be always in each other's company, when one sees how, from one end of the boulevards to the other, extensive café-less patches are succeeded by spots where two or three or more of the places are huddled one on top of the other. Here, on the Boulevard des Italiens, is a sort of spurious Pousset's; a branch, an offshoot, not the Pousset's, only an exoteric succursale of the establishment whose esoteric centre is in the Faubourg Montmartre. To this latter place it is now quite time to repair. The other cafés along the boulevards-Zimmer's, the Café de Suède, Café Garen, Café des Princes are neither worth going to nor speaking of.

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II.

From twelve to half-past, a good time to arrive at Pousset's. Vacant seats are few, but celebrities many. Inside and outside, the café is packed. And when one reflects that to each one of those consumers," who has his place taken by other consumers" the moment he departs-corresponds at least one and generally more than one big mug of Munich beer, one can readily conceive why a special train runs daily from the Bavarian capital to Paris, freighted solely with the produce of Löwenbrau, Spatenbrau, and other Braüs claiming doubtless to be equally good. A great German victory, greater than Worth or Sedan. French patriots may, and do, declaim and rave. The only answer to their objurgations is, that if German beer is not to be drunk in France, then France must fabricate beer of her own at least as good if not better, which she doesn't, and can't do.

On making good one's entrance into the famous brasserie of the wits, one pauses and looks around with some bewilderment. Such crowding, such clattering of glasses and plates, such Babel noise of tongues, such apparent general confusion; such rushing of white-aproned waiters to and fro, bearing aloft foaming tankards of the topaz-hued liquid all a-glitter under the bluish glare of electric light! The decoration of the room, with its dark tones of old oak and Spanish leather, dim faded hues of tapes

But

try hangings, freshness of faïences here and there on the walls, and richness of handsome stained-glass windows, is, in its elaborately designed effect of medievalism, harmonious and pleasing to the eye. attendants and company too, are as unmedieval as could possibly be imagined. At first sight, a motley crew; a gathering, at least, as composite as can be seen in the street outside.

The situation of Pousset's, for a place which from the first has had its aspects of chic-ness, is un-chic to a degree. The Faubourg Montmartre, by night especially, is one of the nastiest thoroughfares in Paris. The Strand, only worse; if worse than the Strand, in the hours of darkness, be conceivable to the mind of man. That Place de Châteaudun, too, at the corner of which Pousset's stands, is not improper only, but bourgeois in its commonplaceness of impropriety. Yet people for years past have patronized Pousset's who perhaps would hesitate to honor it with their presence were it situated in any better part of the town.

Notwithstanding Pousset's vogue among fashionable and literary circles, persons neither fashionable nor literary, nor anything else that is mentionable to ears polite, will often force their way into the place from their native gutter without. They do not, of course, here find themselves in their element. Visibly they don't enjoy having to be on their good behavior, and are generally inclined to vote Pousset's (as the writer once heard said by a gentleman of essentially Faubourg-Montmartre an appearance who was turned ruthlessly away one night from the temple of old oak and stained glass) a "sale boîte,' fit only for "des sales artistes. Pousset's is not sufficiently democratic for the denizens of the "Faubourg du Crime.”

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Fashion at Pousset's-that is represented by, here and there, seated in the more comfortable corners, a certain number of men and women (men with women, cela va sans dire) whose smartness is genuine enough-It has been a première to-night at one of the best theatres. So Pousset is attracting not only several of the critics, but also a batch of first-nighters, who stand or sit and look about them as if they were come to seek a sixth act to the evening's performance. Quite a theatrical night, indeed, at this beerhouse. Appropriately accompanied, here are several

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well-known ladies of the boards. Esconced at one of the tables near the door, that woman with the small pretty features, melting eye, and delicate porcelain complexion. She is charmingly dressed in white and Nile-green silk, with a bonnet of the kind that any lady would immediately and very truthfully pronounce "a love." It is Mlle. du Minil, of the Français, with her good and respected mother -a mother of that monumental type which actresses, French actresses at any rate, seem to revel in. That other attractive face, straight proud little nose, delicate Cupid's bow mouth, brow fresh and smooth beneath the bandeaux à la vierge Mlle. Depoix of the Gymnase, or is it the Vaudeville now? . . . I forget. Here, again, a somewhat interesting female vis age, sharp expression, keen eye, and somewhat Gavroche air genrally-Mlle. Augustine Leriche. It isn't her expression only that is sharp. Pour plus amples détails, inquire of the lady's lady-friends. Histrions of the other sex also are here to-night, more numerous, if less delightful. Those two little shrivelled old men, sitting huddled up together, as like as two twins.

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Twins they are.

Ils s'y sont mis à deux, as Scholl said, pour nous embêter davantage. Anxious roving black eyes, wizened smooth-shaven visages, long black locks thrown back with that displeasing careful carelessness, one of the surest marks of a nature filled with vulgar conceit the "frères Lyonnet," who for forty years past have been singing, reciting, attending at all funerals of eminent artists, and otherwise thrusting their little joint individuality upon a public which has long since tired of the same. And now they are stranded, high and dry, upon two stamped-leather seats at the brasserie Pousset, with none so kind as to do them-a demi or even a quart of Munich beer. Not long ago they brought out a volume of Souvenirs. Amusing, but not exactly in the places where amusement was meant. "Reminiscences" of that kind are what readers generally wish to forget.

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A heavily lined closely shaven face, with gray hair showing beneath the brim of a quite extraordinary hat. .. Georges Richard. Plays he has written, theatres he has directed; or rather these latter have directed him, toward the Bankruptcy Court, if current report is to be believed. Was it he or some other fellow

creature bearing the same by no means unusual patronymic, who perpetrated that most pathetic apostrophe in a five-act drama in verse to "cette table qui t'a vu naître"?

A singularly pretty boy, with another pretty boy. Both nicely clothed, scarfed, and hatted (a thing rare enough in Paris to be "made a note of" when "found"), and both completely conscious of these facts. Pretty boy No. 1: young Samary, whose full smooth face with the peculiar bright-eyed expression, recalls instantly to mind his late clever sister Jeanne. She held at the Français a more prominent position than he, one fears, ever will do. But one imagines that life, for George Samary, contains other successes than those to be won at the Comédie Française. Pretty boy No. 2: his name escapes me for the moment, but I know he is a recent prix de comédie of the Conservatoire, and is looked on by admiring friends-of the female gender more especially-as the Delaunay of the future.

A face bearing every mark of intelligent perceptions and sympathetic power: Antoine's, the young and brilliantly successful manager of the Théâtre Libre. His companion's face, Mévisto's, one of the cracks of the Théâtre Libre troupe: coarse, and rather sneering just at present (the pair are probably talking about a friend), but not without a certain look of power. Enter to Antoine a gentleman fresh from England. The new-comer promptly sits himself down to prawns along with a demi of beer, and relates a tale of one of Antoine's English confrères. Antoine, the manager of the Théâtre Libre, considers the anecdote amusing. Perhaps there are anecdotes about Antoine that might be considered amusing by the English actor in question.

Playwrights like poets are an irritable genus, and several of them, entre parenthèses, are here to-night at Pousset's. That young one-so young, but already so fat-is Gandillot, the author of Les Femmes Collantes, the farce hailed with such Comanche yells of delight by Sarcey several years ago, when it was first produced at the Théâtre Déjazet. petit Gandillot," Sarcey wrote-though why "petit," seeing the gentleman is very nearly as large around the waist as M. Sarcey himself" ce petit Gandillot ira loin. Ce petit has not since betrayed

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Henri Becque a name to conjure with in the Paris of to-day. Becque's face at once makes you think of his plays. Mas sive and full; a firm clear glance, from under strongly marked brows; a mouth, soft and sensitive yet not exactly weak, under a stiffly clipped mustache; but the chin, that pasty chin, in which all the strength of the rest of the countenance appears belied! His chin gives Becque away; to use one of those Americanisms now thriving lustily, like any other weeds, in the fair but ill-kept garden of our English speech. Desinit in piscem applies to both the visage and the pieces. They begin, these pieces, most effectively, powerfully; progress most happily, and then fall away to nothing at the close. Genius, yes, but the poor man cannot keep it up for more than two acts out of five. This sort of thing must be trying to the temper; and Becque is querulous and complaining. At this very moment he is say ing, in his raspingest voice, vinegary things to Gandillot, who listens with one ear and, with one eye, glances indifferently assent. "Becque est arrivé en se plaignant," somebody lately said: "he has complained his way into success. Smart enough, perhaps, but not true. People are constantly saying untrue things about other people in Paris as occasionally also in London. If the things were always smart things it wouldn't so much matter.

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Not fashionables, however, not actresses and actors, not dramatists, not even prawns and beer, are the chief attraction at Pousset's. These things are either not worth having, or else may be had in equal perfection elsewhere. One must remember that what one has come for is the presence and the conversation of the literary geniuses and artists.

These are easily distinguishable among even the large crowd gathered together here to-night. Unmistakable, at all times in all places, is the stamp of superior intellect, that sets apart those marked with it from the ordinary unideaed herd, like

shepherds' dogs in the midst of a flock of sheep.

Almost every night that score of men come to take up that little quarter of their own in the corner, where half-a dozen tables are set end to end against the handsomely tapestried wall. They split themselves usually into little groups forming part of one great whole, as the nebula do in the Milky Way; and then, to the accompaniment obligato of beer and smoke, and ham and sourcrout and prawns (to such Germanic uses are Parisian palates now put), they, night after night, hour after hour, up to two or three A.M., sit realizing Lee's line on Alexander, slightly altered: "Then they will talk-ye gods! how they will talk,'

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Most admirable among the talkers—in various respects most remarkable among all the beerhouse's divers habitués-is the gentleman known to letters under the name of Catulle Mendès. Singular he is as to looks. A face filled to overflowing with beauty of the finest kind. Beauty of feature, hue, expression. Long soft light hair, thinning but slightly-at fifty years of age !-over the crown of the head, but unflecked with the least thread of gray.

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Smooth brow; large eyes veiled by drooping lids; a nose quite admirable in shape, its Hebraism apparent only in a slight peculiarity of the nostril's curve. rounded gentle contour of cheek and chin, framed by a beard as graceful as the swaying frondage of the fern. A countenance like that of Fra Angelico's Christ. yet suggestive, most horribly, of that corruption which is the soul of Mendès's art. A certain blasphemous but witty quatrain on Mendès has been circulating in Paris for years past, which however must be left to be supplied by the imagination of English readers not accustomed to the audacity of French wit, and not prepared, because it is witty, to pardon it for being out

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