Another tavern that took up coffee after Procope, was the Royal Drummer, which Jean Ramponaux established at the Courtille des Porcherons and which followed Magny's. His hostelry rightly belongs to the tavern class, although coffee had a prominent place on its menu. It became notorious for excesses and low-class vices during the reign of Louis XV, who was a frequent visitor. Low and high were to be found in Ramponaux's cellar, particularly when some especially wild revelry was in prospect. Marie Antoinette once declared she had her most enjoyable time at a wild farandole in the Royal Drummer. Ramponaux was taken to its heart by fashionable Paris; and his name was used as a trade mark on furniture, clothes, and foods.
The Cashier's Counter in a Paris Coffee House of 1782
From a drawing by Rétif de la Bretonne
The popularity of Ramponaux's Royal Drummer is attested by an inscription on an early print showing the interior of the café. Translated, it reads:
The pleasures of ease untroubled to taste,
The leisure of home to enjoy without haste,
Perhaps a few hours at Magny's to waste,
Ah, that was the old-fashioned way!
Today all our laborers, everyone knows,
Go running away ere the working hours close,
And why? They must be at Monsieur Ramponaux'!
Behold, the new style of café!
When coffee houses began to crop up rapidly in Paris, the majority centered in the Palais Royal, "that garden spot of beauty, enclosed on three sides by three tiers of galleries," which Richelieu had erected in 1636, under the name of Palais Cardinal, in the reign of Louis XIII. It became known as the Palais Royal in 1643; and soon after the opening of the Café de Procope, it began to blossom out with many attractive coffee stalls, or rooms, sprinkled among the other shops that occupied the galleries overlooking the gardens.
Life In The Early Coffee Houses