Is this same Dr. Squintum.
“What pedlar can forbear to grin,
Before his Worship that has been,
To think what folly lurks within
This Just Ass Dr. Squintum?”
Old René d’Anjou used to say, that, as soon as a man had breakfasted, it was his bounden duty to devote himself to the great business of the day,—think of dinner. We will in some wise follow the instructions given,—first, however, saying a word or two upon French coffee-houses, and then upon those who naturally take precedence of “dinners,”—the cooks by whom dinners are prepared.
THE FRENCH CAFÉS.
In the reign of Louis XV. there were not less than six hundred cafés in Paris. London, at the same period, could not count as many dozens. Under Louis Napoleon, the cafés have reached to the amazing number of between three and four thousand. All these establishments acknowledge the Café Procope as the founder of the dynasty, although, indeed, there were coffee-vendors in Paris before the time of the accomplished Sicilian. “Vixerunt fortes ante Agamemnona.”
The consumption of coffee in Paris, at the period of the breaking out of the Revolution, was something enormous. The French West-Indian Islands furnished eighty millions of pounds annually, and this was irrespective of what was derived from the East. The two sources together were not sufficient to supply the kingdom. Thence adulterations, fortunes to the adulterators, and that supremacy of chicory, which has destroyed the well-earned reputation of French coffee.
I have already spoken of the Café Procope, and here I will only add an anecdote illustrative of the scenes that sometimes occurred there, and of the national character generally in the reign of Louis XV. One afternoon that M. de Saint Foix was seated at his usual table, an officer of the King’s Body-Guard entered, sat down, and ordered “a cup of coffee, with milk, and a roll,” adding, “It will serve me for a dinner!” At this Saint Foix remarked aloud, that “a cup of coffee, with milk, and a roll, was a confoundedly poor dinner.” The officer remonstrated; Saint Foix reiterated his remark, and again and again declared, that nothing the gallant officer could say to the contrary, would convince him that a cup of coffee, with milk, and a roll, was not a confoundedly poor dinner. Thereupon a challenge was given and accepted, and the whole of the persons present adjourned as spectators of a fight, which ended by Saint Foix receiving a wound in the arm. “That is all very well,” said the wounded combatant; “but I call you to witness, gentlemen, that I am still profoundly convinced, that a cup of coffee, with milk, and a roll, is a confoundedly poor dinner!” At this moment, the principals were arrested, and carried before the Duke de Noailles, in whose presence Saint Foix, without waiting to be questioned, said, “Monseigneur, I had not the slightest intention of offending the gallant officer, who, I doubt not, is an honourable man; but Your Excellency can never prevent my asserting, that a cup of coffee, with milk, and a roll, is a confoundedly poor dinner.” “Why, so it is,” said the Duke. “Then I am not in the wrong,” remarked Saint Foix; “and a cup of coffee,”——at these words Magistrates, delinquents, and auditory, burst into a roar of laughter, and the antagonists became friends. It was a more bloodless issue than that which occurred to Michel Lepelletier, in later years, at the Café Février. He was seated at dinner there, when an ex-garde-du-corps, named Paris, approached him, inquired if he were the Lepelletier who had voted for the death of Louis XVI., and, receiving an affirmative reply, drew forth a dagger, and swiftly slew him on the spot.