This play, produced for the first time under the title of La Folle Journee, was written by one Caron de Beaumarchais—­a man of wit, a man of letters, a man of the people, a man of nothing—­and was destined to achieve immortality under its later title of Le Mariage de Figaro.

A few years later, and the Rue de l’Ancienne Comedie echoed daily and nightly to the dull rumble of Revolutionary tumbrils, and the heavy tramp of Revolutionary mobs.  Danton and Camille Desmoulins must have passed through it habitually on their way to the Revolutionary Tribunal.  Charlotte Corday (and this is a matter of history) did pass through it that bright July evening, 1793, on her way to a certain gloomy house still to be seen in the adjoining Rue de l’Ecole de Medecine, where she stabbed Marat in his bath.

But throughout every vicissitude of time and politics, though fashion deserted the Rue de l’Ancienne Comedie, and actors migrated, and fresh generations of wits and philosophers succeeded each other, the Cafe Procope still held its ground and maintained its ancient reputation.  The theatre (closed in less than a century) became the studio first of Gros and then of Gerard, and was finally occupied by a succession of restaurateurs but the Cafe Procope remained the Cafe Procope, and is the Cafe Procope to this day.

The old street and all belonging to it—­especially and peculiarly the Cafe Procope—–­was of the choicest Quartier Latin flavor in the time of which I write; in the pleasant, careless, impecunious days of my youth.  A cheap and highly popular restaurateur named Pinson rented the old theatre.  A costumier hung out wigs, and masks, and debardeur garments next door to the restaurateur.  Where the fatal tumbril used to labor past, the frequent omnibus now rattled gayly by; and the pavements trodden of old by Voltaire, and Beaumarchais, and Charlotte Corday, were thronged by a merry tide of students and grisettes.  Meanwhile the Cafe Procope, though no longer the resort of great wits and famous philosophers, received within its hospitable doors, and nourished with its indifferent refreshments, many a now celebrated author, painter, barrister, and statesman.  It was the general rendezvous for students of all kinds—­poets of the Ecole de Droit, philosophers of the Ecole de Medecine, critics of the Ecole des Beaux Arts.  It must however be admitted that the poetry and criticism of these future great men was somewhat too liberally perfumed with tobacco, and that into their systems of philosophy there entered a considerable element of grisette.

Such, at the time of my first introduction to it, was the famous Cafe Procope.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF BREAKFAST.

“Now this, mon cher,” said Mueller, taking off his hat with a flourish to the young lady at the comptoir, “is the immortal Cafe Procope.”