THE PHILOSOPHY OF BREAKFAST.
"Now this, _mon cher_," said Müller, taking off his hat with a flourish
to the young lady at the _comptoir_, "is the immortal Café Procope."
I looked round, and found myself in a dingy, ordinary sort of Café, in
no wise differing from any other dingy, ordinary sort of Café in that
part of Paris. The decorations were ugly enough to be modern. The
ceiling was as black with gas-fumes and tobacco smoke as any other
ceiling in any other estaminet in the Quartier Latin. The waiters looked
as waiters always look before midday--sleepy, discontented, and
unwashed. A few young men of the regular student type were scattered
about here and there at various tables, reading, smoking, chatting,
breakfasting, and reading the morning papers. In an alcove at the upper
end of the second room (for there were two, one opening from the other)
stood a blackened, broken-nosed, plaster bust of Voltaire, upon the
summit of whose august wig some irreverent customer had perched a
particularly rakish-looking hat. Just in front of this alcove and below
the bust stood a marble-topped table, at one end of which two young men
were playing dominoes to the accompaniment of the matutinal absinthe.
"And this," said Müller, with another flourish, "is the still more
immortal table of the still more supremely immortal Voltaire. Here he
was wont to rest his sublime elbows and sip his _demi-tasse_. Here, upon
this very table, he wrote that famous letter to Marie Antoinette that
Fréron stole, and in revenge for which he wrote the comedy called
_l'Ecossaise_; but of this admirable satire you English, who only know
Voltaire in his Henriade and his history of Charles the Twelfth, have
probably never heard till this moment! _Eh bien_! I'm not much wiser
than you--so never mind. I'll be hanged if I've ever read a line of it.
Anyhow, here is the table, and at this other end of it we'll have our
breakfast."
It was a large, old-fashioned, Louis Quatorze piece of furniture, the
top of which, formed from a single slab of some kind of gray and yellow
marble, was stained all over with the coffee, wine, and ink-splashes of
many generations of customers. It looked as old--nay, older--than the
house itself.
The young men who were playing at dominoes looked up and nodded, as
three or four others had done in the outer room when we passed through.
"_Bonjour, l'ami_," said the one who seemed to be winning. "Hast thou
chanced to see anything of Martial, coming along!"
"I observed a nose defiling round the corner of the Rue de Bussy,"
replied Müller, "and it looked as if Martial might be somewhere in the
far distance, but I didn't wait to see. Are you expecting him?"
"Confound him--yes! We've been waiting more than half an hour."
"If you have invited him to breakfast," said Müller, "he is sure to
come."
"On the contrary, he has invited us to breakfast."
"Ah, that alters the case," said Müller, philosophically. "Then he is
sure _not_ to come." "Garçon!"
A bullet-headed, short-jacketed, long-aproned waiter, who looked as if
he had not been to bed since his early youth, answered the summons,
"M'sieur!"
"What have you that you can especially recommend this morning?"
The waiter, with that nasal volubility peculiar to his race, rapidly ran
over the whole vegetable and animal creation.
Müller listened with polite incredulity.
"Nothing else?" said he, when the other stopped, apparently from want of
breath.
"_Mais oui, M'sieur_!" and, thus stimulated, the waiter, having
"exhausted worlds and then imagined new," launched forth into a second
and still more impossible catalogue.
Müller turned to me.
"The resources of this establishment, you observe," he said, very
gravely, "are inexhaustible. One might have a Roc's egg à la Sindbad for
the asking."
The waiter looked puzzled, shuffled his slippered feet, and murmured
something about "_oeufs sur le plat_."
"Unfortunately, however," continued Müller, "we are but men--not
fortresses provisioning for a siege. Antoine, _mon enfant_, we know thee
to be a fellow of incontestible veracity, and thy list is magnificent;
but we will be content with a _vol-au-vent_ of fish, a _bifteck aux
pommes frites_, an _omelette sucrée_, and a bottle of thy 1840 Bordeaux
with the yellow seal. Now vanish!"
The waiter, wearing an expression of intense relief, vanished
accordingly.
Meanwhile more students had come in, and more kept coming. Hats and caps
cropped up rapidly wherever there were pegs to hang them on, and the
talking became fast and furious.
I soon found that everybody knew everybody at the Café Procope, and that
the specialty of the establishment was dominoes--just as the specialty
of the Café de la Régence is chess. There were games going on before
long at almost every table, and groups of lookers-on gathered about
those who enjoyed the reputation of being skilful players.
Gradually breakfast after breakfast emerged from some mysterious nether
world known only to the waiters, and the war of dominoes languished.
"These are all students, of course," I said presently, "and yet, though
I meet a couple of hundred fellows at our hospital lectures, I don't see
a face I know."
"You would find some by this time, I dare say, in the other room,"
replied Müller. "I brought you in here that you might sit at Voltaire's
table, and eat your steak under the shadow of Voltaire's bust; but this
salon is chiefly frequented by law-students--the other by medical and
art students. Your place, _mon chér_, as well as mine, is in the outer
sanctuary."
"That infernal Martial!" groaned one of the domino-players at the other
end of the table. "So ends the seventh game, and here we are still.
_Parbleu!_ Horace, hasn't that absinthe given you an inconvenient amount
of appetite?"
"Alas! my friend--don't mention it. And when the absinthe is paid for, I
haven't a sou."
"My own case precisely. What's to be done?"
"Done!" echoed Horace, pathetically. "Shade of Apicius! inspire
me...but, no--he's not listening."
"Hold! I have it. We'll make our wills in one another's favor, and die."
"I should prefer to die when the wind is due East, and the moon at the
full," said Horace, contemplatively.
"True--besides, there is still _la mère_ Gaudissart. Her cutlets are
tough, but her heart is tender. She would not surely refuse to add one
more breakfast to the score!"
Horace shook his head with an air of great despondency.
"There was but one Job," said he, "and he has been dead some time. The
patience of _la mère_ Gaudissart has long since been entirely
exhausted."
"I am not so sure of that. One might appeal to her feelings, you
know--have a presentiment of early death--wipe away a tear... Bah! it is
worth the effort, anyhow."
"It is a forlorn hope, my dear fellow, but, as you say, it is worth the
effort. _Allons donc!_ to the storming of _la mère_ Gaudissart!"
And with this they pushed aside the dominoes, took down their hats,
nodded to Müller, and went out.
"There go two of the brightest fellows and most improvident scamps in
the whole Quartier," said my companion. "They are both studying for the
bar; both under age; both younger sons of good families; and both
destined, if I am not much mistaken, to rise to eminence by-and-by.
Horace writes for _Figaro_ and the _Petit Journal pour Rire_--Théophile
does _feuilleton_ work--romances, chit-chat, and political
squibs--rubbish, of course; but clever rubbish, and wonderful when one
considers what boys they both are, and what dissipated lives they lead.
The amount of impecuniosity those fellows get through in the course of a
term is something inconceivable. They have often only one decent suit
between them--and sometimes not that. To-day, you see, they are at their
wits' end for a breakfast. They have run their credit dry at Procope and
everywhere else, and are gone now to a miserable little den in the Rue
du Paon, kept by a fat good-natured old soul called _la mère_
Gaudissart. She will perhaps take compassion on their youth and
inexperience, and let them have six sous worth of horsebeef soup, stale
bread, and the day before yesterday's vegetables. Nay, don't look so
pitiful! We poor devils of the Student Quartier hug our Bohemian life,
and exalt it above every other. When we have money, we cannot find
windows enough out of which to fling it--when we have none, we start
upon _la chasse au diner_, and enjoy the pleasures of the chase. We
revel in the extremes of fasting and feasting, and scarcely know which
we prefer."
"I think your friends Horace and Théophile are tolerably clear as to
which _they_ prefer," I remarked, with a smile.
"Bah! they would die of _ennui_ if they had always enough to eat! Think
how it sharpens a man's wits if--given the time, the place, and the
appetite--he has every day to find the credit for his dinners! Show me a
mathematical problem to compare with it as a popular educator of youth!"
"But for young men of genius, like Horace and Théophile..."
"Make yourself quite easy, _mon cher_. A little privation will do them
no kind of harm. They belong to that class of whom it has been said that
'they would borrow money from Harpagon, and find truffles on the raft of
the Medusa.' But hold! we are at the end of our breakfast. What say you?
Shall we take our _demi-tasse_ in the next room, among our
fellow-students of physic and the fine arts?"