, is the site of the Porte St. Honore of the Charles V. wall
before which Joan of Arc was wounded at the Siege of Paris in 1429.
The old chess-players' temple where Diderot loved to watch the
matches; where the author of _Gil Blas_ beheld in a vast and
brilliantly lighted salon, a score of silent and grave _pousseurs de
bois_ (wood-shovers) surrounded by crowds of spectators amid a silence
so profound that the movement of the pieces alone could be heard;
where Voltaire and D' Alembert were often seen; where Jean Jacques
Rousseau, dressed as an Armenian, drew such crowds that the proprietor
was forced to seek police protection; where Robespierre loved to play
a cautious game and the young and impecunious Napoleon Bonaparte, an
impatient player and bad loser, waited on fortune; where strangers
from all corners of the earth congregated as in an arena where
victory was esteemed final and complete; where Poles, Turks, Moors and
Hindoos in their picturesque garbs made a scene unparalleled even at
the Rialto of Venice; where on Sunday afternoons a seat was worth a
monarch's ransom--this classic Cafe de la Regence which, until 1852,
stood on the Place du Palais Royal, no longer exists.

We enter the gardens of the Palais by the colonnade to the R. of the
Theatre Francais and pass N. along the W. colonnade. On this side was
situated the famous Cafe de Foy (p. 261), founded in 1700, whose
proprietor was in early days alone permitted to place chairs and
tables on the terrace. There, in the afternoon, would sit the finely
apparelled sons of Mars, and other gay dogs of the period, with their
scented perukes, amber vinaigrettes, silver-hilted swords and
gold-headed canes quizzing the passers-by. In summer evenings, after
the conclusion of the opera at 8-30, the _bonne compagnie_ in full
dress would stroll under the great overarching trees of the _grande
allee_, or sit at the cafes listening to open-air performers,
sometimes revelling in the moonlight as late as the small hours of the
morning.

It was from one of the tables of the Cafe Foy that Camille Desmoulins
sounded the war-cry of the Revolution. Every day a special courier
from Versailles brought the bulletins of the National Assembly, which
were read publicly amid clamorous interjections. Spies found their
office a perilous one, for, if discovered, they were ducked in the
basins of the fountains, and when feeling grew more bitter, risked
meeting a violent death. Later the Caf