Wine aside, a better meal for less money can be had in a score of places on Broadway. In the matter of wine, the New York to the Paris price would be as a dollar to the franc.
In the Quartier Latin these places are patronized almost exclusively by the student class. Not less than fifty of the latter were at table in the Café Weber when Jean Marot and Mlle. Fouchette entered. Here and there among them were a few grisettes and as many cocottes of the Café d'Harcourt, costumes en bicyclette, demure, hungry, and silent. Young women in smart caps and white aprons briskly served the tables, while in the centre, in a sort of enclosed pulpit, sat the handsome, rosy-faced dame du comptoir, with a sharp eye for employés and a winning smile and nod for familiar customers.
There was a perceptible sensation upon the entrance of the last comers. A momentary hush was succeeded by a general buzz of conversation, the subject of which was quite easily understood. The stately dame du comptoir immediately opened her little wicket and came down from her perch to show the couple to the best seats, a courtesy rarely extended by that impersonation of restaurant dignity. The hungry women almost stopped eating to see what man was in tow of the "Savatière."
"We are decidedly an event," laughingly observed Jean as they became seated where they could command the general crowd at table.
"Yes, monsieur," replied the dame du comptoir, though his remark had not been addressed to that lady,—"the fame of the brave Monsieur Marot is well known in the quarter. And—and mademoiselle," she added, sweetly, "mademoiselle—well, everybody knows mademoiselle."
With this under-cut at Mlle. Fouchette the rosy-cheeked cashier left them in charge of the waitress of that particular table.
"You see, Monsieur Jean," said his companion, not at all pleased by this reception, "we are both pretty well known here."
"So it seems. Yet I was never in here before, if I remember correctly."
"Nor I," said she, "but once or twice."
Notoriety is fame to Frenchmen, and while he did not yet fully comprehend it, Jean Marot had reached this sort of fame in a single day. His name had been actively and even viciously discussed in the newspapers. He was accused of being both royalist and anti-Dreyfusarde by the ultra republican press. He was said to be a Bonapartist. The Dreyfusarde papers declared that the government had connived at his discharge from prison. The nationalist papers lauded him as a patriot. One extravagant writer compared him to the celebrated Camille Desmoulins who led the great Revolution. A noisy deputation had called upon him in the Rue St. Honoré to find that he had not been seen there since the riot.