Coffee Quips and Anecdotes
Coffee literature is full of quips and anecdotes. Probably the most famous coffee quip is that of Mme. de Sévigné, who, as already told in chapter XI, was wrongfully credited with saying, "Racine and coffee will pass." It was Voltaire in his preface to Irene who thus accused the amiable letter-writer; and she, being dead, could not deny it.
That Mme. de Sévigné was at one time a coffee drinker is apparent from this quotation from one of her letters: "The cavalier believes that coffee gives him warmth, and I at the same time, foolish as you know me, do not take it any longer."
La Roque called the beverage "the King of Perfumes", whose charm was enriched when vanilla was added.
Emile Souvestre (1806–1854) said: "Coffee keeps, so to say, the balance between bodily and spiritual nourishment."
Isid Bourdon said: "The discovery of coffee has enlarged the realm of illusion and given more promise to hope."
An old Bourbon proverb says: "To an old man a cup of coffee is like the door post of an old house—it sustains and strengthens him."
Jardin says that in the Antilles, instead of orange blossoms, the brides carry a spray of coffee blossoms; and when a woman remains unmarried, they say she has lost her coffee branch. "We say in France, that she has coiffé Sainte-Catherine."
Fontenelle and Voltaire have both been quoted as authors of the famous reply to the remark that coffee was a slow poison: "I think it must be, for I've been drinking it for eighty-five years and am not dead yet."
In Meidinger's German Grammar the "slow-poison" bon mot is attributed to Fontenelle.