It came to the girl for the first time—selfless as she was—that Noll was finding the sufficient delights of life very well without her; and the thought bit into her heart.
She sighed and arose wearily.
To-night she must dine alone, as she had so often dined alone of late—yet to-night, for the first time, she resented it—was stung by the whisper that it need not have been.
She took her way to the little street of l’Ancienne Comédie. She did not trespass into Noll’s noisier cafés—the noise and the disturbance and restlessness distressed her. Noll preferred “life” at the noisier cafés—the greetings were louder.
Betty betook herself languidly now to her dinner, through the white portals of the Café Procope. She stole into a quiet corner, where she was used to sit and think her sweet thoughts, where the pen was always busy. But her weary brain this night was branded with harsh truths from which she could find no hiding-place. She wondered what the great brooding brains that had known this ancient hostel had gnawed upon within these very walls—what petty little insolences had been thrust upon them whilst they were “thinking in continents.” And she felt it a relief when at last the old-world spirit of the place took possession of her, and she found her wits roaming from herself through the pageant of its past magnificence. The dark atmosphere of its sombre peacefulness was lit for awhile with the glory of its ancient days; and the dark corners of the Café Procope became haunted with the mighty breath of its Great Dead. These had been no mediocrities, whatever their faults and failings, but big full-blooded Men—their very sins preposterously magnificent passports to Hell. These were not content to play with the mere toys of life—juggling with echoes.
Fallen into the faded relic of bygone days, this peaceful place has passed into the quietude of the neglected thoroughfare on the narrow footway of which stand its white portals. The strenuous world goes rattling past the end of the old road, unheeding of its one-time magnificence; turns but seldom into its neglected way. Its noisy history is now forgot, its splendid drama remembered by how few of them that live in all this vast splendid city—nay, even by how few of such as have their dingy habitation in this very street, or win the prizes of learning in the illustrious schools of its neighbourhood!
Heretofore had been the very heart of all France—her hot blood had leaped hottest here, sending the throb of its pulsing life to uttermost valley and hamlet of this vast realm. In this little coffee-house, now fallen into neglect, had met together the great wits of France, her master-minds. Nay, rumour hath it that here indeed was very name of coffee-house begotten, begun, made manifest; for here was first given, to France, coffee to chase the dinner and to comfort the stomach of France.
Hither wandering, our Orange William being just come to the throne of England, there had entered into possession, in curly long peruke and somewhat dandified exterior to his shrewd inner man, Master François Procope, in that same year that the Comedy of France took possession of the then Théâtre Français over the way; and, forthwith, glory and fame came to his Café Procope—the wits gathering there to the sipping of coffee and making of elaborate waggeries, not without wrangle, and swords whipped from sullen scabbards, and the like follies manifold. Here had descended from sedan-chair the bent lean figure of Voltaire, his play Irene being in rehearsal opposite, and sipped the cup of coffee that was now become the mode in France, the maker of mode. The keen eyes had roved over these panelled walls—here he had stood sneering away the tawdry pretence of popes and kings and laughing to death the diseased and putrid hereditary aristocracy of France. These walls knew the lean mocker well. In yonder sombre little room you shall see still the chair and table at which he was used to sit and write his vitriol jibes, that were the severe medicine for the corrupt body of the decayed nobility.
Here, in fantastic riot, had Rousseau been carried shoulder high after a dramatic triumph; here had Condorcet, in intervals of writing upon the Integral Calculus, been not above horseplay; here had sat Diderot, scheming his encyclopædic schemes, talking tomfool solemn travesties of dangerous talk with winking eye upon his fellow-wags, to lead on the over-zealous police agents to the fussy discovery of large mares’ nests of conspiracy.
Nor had jests and badinage been the only fare. In these ghostly dingy mirrors had passed the faces of the great actors in the world tragedy of France. Within these walls had intrigued the master conspirators of the seventeen hundreds. Here had been put on the first bonnet rouge that was symbol of the coming earthquake of Europe. Here had sat, in yonder corner, fearless, massive great-souled Danton, shock-headed, black haired, playing at chess with the crooked blear-eyed horse-doctor Marat; here had stood, dark-browed, pock-marked, incontinent, bankrupt, the great resolute sane strong man of the Revolution, Mirabeau, the born ruler of men, destined to die of his youth’s vices at that very moment when bewildered France was at his feet and had the sorest need of him; here, too, that other pock-pitted fellow, the dandified sphinx of the madness, “seagreen” Robespierre, crafty, merciless; here had throbbed the heart of Camille Desmoulins, who lost his head in plea for mercifulness, bearding the bloody madness of the Terror with proposal for a Committee of Mercy that keeps his memory sweet as the mellow syllables of his name to all eternity—here with d’Holbach he had sat or paced, airing hot enthusiasms, plunging deeper into dangers their clean souls scarce realized—moving forward to high dramatic destinies none could foretell, godlike, to the guillotine and betrayal and death and broken illusions. Here, too, forger, thief, and liar, had stood Hébert, one of the foullest blots on the Revolution, stood at that door upon that table of Voltaire’s, and, mouthing his Sacred Right of Insurrection, harangued the fierce crowd that packed the narrow thoroughfare, exciting them to the black brutalities of the Terror, stamping his great vulgar foot in passionate frenzy of murderous blasphemies upon the table top so that the heel of his heavy boot split the marble across—he who most damnably lied away the fame of the poor doomed foolish queen where she stood at trial alone amongst her hellish enemies—he who “hated the word Mercy”—here he had sat, little dreaming that his filthy neck should be slit in agony of craven appeal by the very laws of his own planning.