come with me; before six o'clock I shall
have told your name to twenty trumpeters, who will make all Paris resound
with the news that there is a poet in the Faubourg Saint-Jacques. I will
wager, you savage, that you never have put your foot into the Cafe de
Seville. Why, my dear fellow, it is our first manufactory of fame! Here
is the Odeon omnibus, get on! We shall be at the Boulevard Montmartre in
twenty minutes, and I shall baptize you there, as a great man, with a
glass of absinthe."

Dazzled and carried away, Amedee humored him and climbed upon the outside
of the omnibus with his comrade. The vehicle hurried them quickly along
toward the quay, crossed the Seine, the Carrousel, and passed before the
Theatre-Francais, at which Jocquelet, thinking of his approaching debut,
shook his fist, exclaiming, "Now I am ready for you!" Here the young men
were planted upon the asphalt boulevard, in front of the Cafe de Seville.

Do not go to-day to see this old incubator, in which so many political
and literary celebrities have been hatched; for you will only find a
cafe, just like any other, with its groups of ugly little Jews who
discuss the coming races, and here and there a poor creature, painted
like a Jezebel, dying of chagrin over her pot of beer.

At the decline of the Second Empire--it was May 1, 1866, that Amedee
Violette entered there for the first time--the Cafe de, Seville passed
for, and with reason too, one of the most remarkable places in Paris. For
this glorious establishment had furnished by itself, or nearly so, the
eminent staff of our third Republic! Be honest, Monsieur le Prefet, you
who presided at the opening of the agricultural meeting in our province,
and who played the peacock in your dress-coat, embroidered in silver,
before an imposing line of horned creatures; be honest and admit, that,
at the time when you opposed the official candidates in your democratic
journal, you had your pipe in the rack of the Cafe de Seville, with your
name in white enamel upon the blackened bowl! Remember, Monsieur le
Depute, you who voted against all the exemption cases of the military
law, remember who, in this very place, at your daily game of dominoes for
sixty points, more than a hundred times ranted against the permanent
army--you, accustomed to the uproar of assemblies and the noise of the
tavern--contributed to the parliamentary victories by crying, "Six all!
count that!" And you too, Monsieur le Ministre, to who