But this new development was regarded with small favour by the Government, always suspicious of any form of social and intellectual activity. Politics were forbidden, and spies haunted the precincts of the chief cafés. Ill fared the man, however distinguished, whose political feelings overmastered his prudence, for an invidious phrase was not infrequently the password to the Bastille. It was difficult even to discuss philosophy, and the lovers of wisdom who met at Procope’s were reduced to inventing a jargon for its principal terms—Monsieur l’Etre for God, Javotte for Religion and Margot for the Soul—to put spies off the scent, not always with success. No newspapers were provided until the Revolutionary time, when the Gazette or the Journal became more important than the coffee: the cafés of the Palais Royal were then transformed into so many political clubs, where every table served as a rostrum of fiery declamation, for the agitated and eventful summer of 1789 was a rainy one, to the good fortune of the Palais Royal houses. No. 46 Rue Richelieu stands on the site of the Café de Foy, the senior and most famous of them, founded in 1700. It extended through to the gardens of the Palais Royal, and in early times its proprietor was the only one permitted to place chairs and tables on the terrace. There, in the afternoon, would sit the finely-apparelled sons of Mars, and other gay dogs of the period, with their scented perukes, amber vinaigrettes, silver-hilted swords and gold-headed canes, quizzing the passers-by. In summer evenings, after the conclusion of the opera at 8.30., the bonne compagnie in full dress would stroll under the great overarching trees of the grand allée, or sit at the cafés listening to open-air performers, sometimes remaining on moonlight nights as late as 2 a.m. Between 1770 and 1780 the favourite promenade was the scene of violent conflicts between the partisans of Gluck and Piccini, and many a duel was recorded between the champions of the rival musical factions.
It was from one of the tables of the Café Foy that Camille Desmoulins sounded the war-cry of the Revolution. Every day a special courier from Versailles brought the bulletins of the National Assembly, which were read publicly amid clamorous interjections. Spies found their office a perilous one, for, if discovered, they were ducked in the basins of the fountains, and, when feeling grew more bitter, risked meeting a violent death. Later the Café Foy made a complete volte-face, raised its ices to twenty sous and grew Royalist in tone. Its frequenters came armed with sword-sticks and loaded canes, raised their hats when the king’s name was uttered, and one evil day planted a gallows outside the café, painted with the national colours. The excited patriots stormed the house, expelled the Royalists and disinfected the salon with gin. During the occupation of Paris by the allies many a fatal duel between the foreign officers and the Imperialists was initiated there. Later, Horace Vernet painted a swallow on the ceiling, which attracted many visitors; the dramatists and artists of the Théâtre Français freely patronised the house, and among them might be often seen the huge figure of the most prodigious master of modern romantic fiction, Alexandre Dumas.
The extremer section of the Revolutionists frequented the Café Corazza, still extant, which soon became a minor Jacobins, where, after the club was closed, the excited orators continued their discussions: Chabot, Collot d’Herbois and other terrorists met there. The Café Valois was patronised by the Feuillants, and so excited the ire of the Fédérés, who met at the Caveau, that one day they issued forth, assailed their opponents’ stronghold and burned the copies of the Journal de Paris found there. The old Café Procope in the south of Paris became the Café Zoppi, where the “zealous children of triumphant Liberty” assembled, and where the “Friends of the Revolution and of Humanity,” on the news of Franklin’s death, covered the lustres with crape and affixed his bust, crowned with oak leaves, outside the door. A legend told of the great American’s death, and the words “vir Deus” were inscribed beneath the bust. Every day at five o’clock the habitués formed themselves into a club in the salon decorated with statues of Mucius Scevola and Mirabeau, passed resolutions, sent protesting deputations to Royalist editors, and every evening made autos da fé of their publications outside the café. When war was declared they subscribed to purchase a case of muskets as an offering to the Fatherland. Self-regarding citizens, the Société des Amis de la Loi, who desired to eat and drink in peace far from political storms, met in the Café de Flore, near the Porte St. Denis, until the Jacobins applied the scriptural maxim—He who is not for us is against us—and they were forced to take sides. Every partizan had his café; Hebertists, Fayettists, Maratists, Dantonists and Robespierrists, all gathered where their friends were known to meet.
In the early nineteenth century on the displacement of the favourite promenade of Parisian flaneurs from the Palais Royal to the Boulevard des Italiens, the proprietors of cafés and restaurants followed. A group of young fellows entered one evening a small cabaret near the Comédie Italienne (now Opéra Comique), found the wine to their taste and the cuisine excellent. They praised host and fare to their friends, and the modest cabaret developed into the Café Anglais, most famous of epicurean temples, frequented during the Second Empire by kings and princes, to whom alone the haughty proprietor would devote personal care.
The sumptuous cafés Tortoni founded in 1798 and de Paris opened 1822 have long since passed away. So has the Café Hardy, whose proprietor invented dejeûners à la fourchette, although its rival and neighbour, the Café Riche, still exists. “One must be very Hardy to dine at Riche’s, and very Riche to dine at Hardy’s,” was the celebrated mot of an old gourmand of the First Empire. During the early times of the Third Republic the Café Fronton was crowded almost daily by prominent politicians, Gambetta, Spuller, Naquet and others, while the Imperialists, under Cassagnac, met at the Café de la Paix in the Place de l’Opéra, which was dubbed the Boulevard de l’Isle d’Elbe. Many others of the celebrated cafés of the boulevards have disappeared or suffered a transformation into the more popular Brasseries or Tavernes of which so many, alternating with the theatres, restaurants and dazzling shops that line the most-frequented evening promenade of Paris, invite the thirsty or leisurely pleasure-seeker of to-day.
Nowhere may the traveller gain a better impression of the essential gaiety and sociability of the Parisian temperament than by sitting outside a café on the boulevards on a public festival and observing his neighbours and the passers-by—their imperturbable good humour; their easy manners; their simple enjoyments; their quick intelligence, alert gait and expressive gestures; the wonderful skill of the women in dress. The glittering halls of pleasure that appeal to so many travellers, the Bohemian cafés of the outer boulevards, the Folies Bergères, the Moulins Rouges, the Bals Bullier, with their meretricious and vulgar attractions, frequented by the more facile daughters of Lutetia, “whose havoc of virtue is measured by the length of their laundresses’ bills,” as a genial satirist of their sex has phrased it—all these manifestations of la vie, so unutterably dull and sordid, are of small concern to the cultured traveller. The intimate charm and spirit of Paris will be heard and felt by him not amid the whirlwind of these saturnalia largely maintained by the patronage of foreign visitors, but rather in the smaller voices that speak from the inmost Paris which we have essayed to describe. Nor can we bid more fitting adieu to our readers than by translating Goethe’s words to Eckermann: “Think of the city of Paris where all the best of the realms of nature and art in the whole earth are open to daily contemplation, a world-city where the crossing of every bridge or every square recalls a great past, and where at every street corner a piece of history has been unfolded.”