Imagine a place where you do not endure the horror of being alone, and
yet have the freedom of solitude. There, free from the dust, the
boredom, the vulgarities of a household, you reflect at ease,
comfortably seated before a table, unincumbered by all the things that
oppress you in houses; for if useless objects and papers had accumulated
here they would have been promptly removed. You smoke slowly, quietly,
like a Turk, following your thoughts among the blue curves.
If you have a voluptuous desire to taste some warm or refreshing
beverage, well-trained waiters bring it to you immediately. If you feel
like talking with clever men who will not bully you, you have within
reach light sheets on which are printed winged thoughts, rapid, written
for you, which you are not forced to bind and preserve in a library when
they have ceased to please you. This place, the paradise of
civilization, the last and inviolable refuge of the free man, is
the café.
It is the café; but in the ideal, as we dream it, as it ought to be. The
lack of room and the fabulous cost of land on the boulevards of Paris
make it hideous in actuality. In these little boxes--of which the rent
is that of a palace--one would be foolish to look for the space of a
vestiary. Besides, the walls are decorated with stovepipe hats and
overcoats hung on clothes-pegs--an abominable sight, for which atonement
is offered by multitudes of white panels and ignoble gilding, imitations
made by economical process.
And (let us not deceive ourselves) the overcoat, with which one never
knows what to do, and which makes us worry everywhere,--in society, at
the theatre, at balls,--is the great enemy and the abominable
enslavement of modern life. Happy the gentlemen of the age of Louis
XIV., who in the morning dressed themselves for all day, in satin and
velvet, their brows protected by wigs, and who remained superb even when
beaten by the storm, and who, moreover, brave as lions, ran the risk of
pneumonia even if they had to put on, one outside the other, the
innumerable waistcoats of Jodelet in 'Les Précieuses Ridicules'!
"How shall I find my overcoat and my wife's party cape?" is the great
and only cry, the Hamlet-monologue of the modern man, that poisons every
minute of his life and makes him look with resignation toward his dying
hour. On the morning after a ball given by Marshal MacMahon nothing is
found: the overcoats have disappeared; the satin cloaks, the boas, the
lace scarfs have gone up in smoke; and the women must rush in despair
through the driving snow while their husbands try to button their
evening coats, which will not button!
One evening, at a party given by the wife of the President of the
Chamber of Deputies, at which the gardens were lighted by electricity,
Gambetta suddenly wished to show some of his guests a curiosity, and
invited them to go down with him into the bushes. A valet hastened to
hand him his overcoat, but the guests did not dare to ask for theirs,
and followed Gambetta as they were! However, I believe one or two of
them survived.
At the café no one carries off your overcoat, no one hides it; but they
are all hung up, spread out on the wall like masterpieces of art,
treated as if they were portraits of Mona Lisa or Violante, and you have
them before your eyes, you see them continually. Is there not reason to
curse the moment your eyes first saw the light? One may, as I have said,
read the papers; or rather one might read them if they were not hung on
those abominable racks, which remove them a mile from you and force you
to see them on your horizon.
As to the drinks, give up all hope; for the owner of the café has no
proper place for their preparation, and his rent is so enormous that he
has to make the best even of the quality he sells. But aside from this
reason, the drinks could not be good, because there are too many of
them. The last thing one finds at these coffee-houses is coffee. It is
delicious, divine, in those little Oriental shops where it is made to
order for each drinker in a special little pot. As to syrups, how many
are there in Paris? In what inconceivable place can they keep the jars
containing the fruit juices needed to make them? A few real ladies,
rich, well-born, good housekeepers, not reduced to slavery by the great
shops, who do not rouge or paint their cheeks, still know how to make in
their own homes good syrups from the fruit of their gardens and their
vineyards. But they naturally do not give them away or sell them to the
keepers of cafés, but keep them to gladden their flaxen-haired children.
Such as it is,--with its failings and its vices, even a full century
after the fame of Procope,--the café, which we cannot drive out of our
memories, has been the asylum and the refuge of many charming spirits.
The old Tabourey, who, after having been illustrious, now has a sort of
half popularity and a pewter bar, formerly heard the captivating
conversations of Barbey and of Aurevilly, who were rivals in the noblest
salons, and who sometimes preferred to converse seated before a marble
table in a hall from which one could see the foliage and the flowers of
the Luxembourg. Baudelaire also talked there, with his clear caressing
voice dropping diamonds and precious stones, like the princess of the
fairy tale, from beautiful red, somewhat thick lips.
A problem with no possible solution holds in check the writers and the
artists of Paris. When one has worked hard all day it is pleasant to
take a seat, during the short stroll that precedes the dinner, to meet
one's comrades and talk with them of everything but politics. The only
favorable place for these necessary accidental meetings is the café; but
is the game worth the candle, or, to speak more exactly, the blinding
gas-jets? Is it worth while, for the pleasure of exchanging words, to
accept criminal absinthe, unnatural bitters, tragic vermouth, concocted
in the sombre laboratories of the cafés by frightful parasites?
Aurélien Scholl, who, being a fine poet and excellent writer, is
naturally a practical man, had a pleasing idea. He wished that the
reunions in the cafés might continue at the absinthe hour, but without
the absinthe! A very honest man, chosen for that purpose, would pour out
for the passers-by, in place of everything else, excellent claret with
quinquina, which would have the double advantage of not poisoning them
and of giving them a wholesome and comforting drink. But this seductive
dream could never be realized. Of course, honest men exist in great
numbers, among keepers of cafés as well as in other walks of life; but
the individual honest man could not be found who would be willing to
pour out quinquina wine in which there was both quinquina and wine.
In the Palais Royal there used to be a café which had retained Empire
fittings and oil lamps. One found there real wine, real coffee, real
milk, and good beefsteaks. Roqueplan, Arsène Houssaye, Michel Lévy, and
the handsome Fiorentino used to breakfast there, and they knew how to
get the best mushrooms. The proprietor of the café had said that as soon
as he could no longer make a living by selling genuine articles, he
would not give up his stock in trade to another, but would sell his
furniture and shut up shop. He kept his word. He was a hero.