The imperial police had a special fondness for the Renaissance, and this café shared with the Brasserie de St. Sévérin, after the Commune was set up, the distinction of being used as a headquarters by the Communard officials.
The Procope, also affected by police spies, was frequented by Spuller, Ferry, Floquet, Vermorel, and Gambetta, who preserved their liberty on more than one occasion by utilising the back door, which had rendered a similar service to Danton in another century.
The Café Voltaire harboured, among others, Gambetta and Vallès, the Café de Buci Vallès and Delescluze, and the Brasserie Audler and the Restaurant Laveur Courbet and his unconventional intimates.
To summarise: from the time of Abélard—the Abélard who was sustained and inspired by the thought of the flaming lips of Héloïse pressed against the convent grating—to and through the Commune, the Pays Latin was characterised by a revolutionary spirit which was composed of three seemingly independent, if not mutually antagonistic, but, in reality, complementary and vitally interrelated traits,—love of laughter, love of liberty, and love of love.
The different persons of this emancipating trinity were equally potent impellers to Quixotic thought and action; and no one of the three could have long survived—such is the French temperament in or out of the Quartier—without both of the others. The Gallic imagination and conscience are dependent on good cheer and affection; they cease to operate if a fellow may not unbend in buffoonery with the boys and may not adore a woman. And, without conscience and imagination, is no revolution.
NOTRE DAME FROM PONT D’AUSTERLITZ