"What! he can write poetry here, in a café?"
"In the first place, dear boy, this is not a café: it is a kind of literary club; everybody you see here is either an author or a journalist."
"Well," I said to Lafarge, "I have never seen a café where they consumed so little and wrote so much."
"The deuce, you are framing already. You almost made a witticism just then, do you know?"
"Well, then, in return for the witticism I have almost perpetrated, tell me who some of these gentlemen are."
"My dear fellow, it would be useless: you need to be a Parisian to be acquainted with reputations which are wholly Parisian."
"But I assure you, my dear Auguste, I am not so provincial in such matters as you think I am."
"Have you heard of Rochefort?"
"Yes. Has he not composed some very pretty songs and two or three successful vaudevilles?"