ge, moving, when his business prospered, to
more pretentious quarters in the rue St.-Andre, facing St.-Michael's
bridge.

[Illustration: A CORNER OF THE HISTORIC CAFE DE PROCOPE SHOWING VOLTAIRE
AND DIDEROT IN DEBATE

From a rare water color]

All these, and others, were essentially the Oriental style of coffee
house of the lower order, and they appealed principally to the poorer
classes and to foreigners. "Gentlemen and people of fashion" did not
care to be seen in this type of public house. But when the French
merchants began to set up, first at St.-Germain's fair, "spacious
apartments in an elegant manner, ornamented with tapestries, large
mirrors, pictures, marble tables, branches for candles, magnificent
lustres, and serving coffee, tea, chocolate, and other refreshments",
they were soon crowded with people of fashion and men of letters.

In this way coffee drinking in public acquired a badge of
respectability. Presently there were some three hundred coffee houses in
Paris. The principal coffee men, in addition to plying their trade in
the city, maintained coffee rooms in St.-Germain's and St.-Laurence's
fairs. These were frequented by women as well as men.

_The Progenitor of the Real Parisian Cafe_

It was not until 1689, that there appeared in Paris a real French
adaptation of the Oriental coffee house. This was the Cafe de Procope,
opened by Francois Procope (Procopio Cultelli, or Cotelli) who came from
Florence or Palermo. Procope was a _limonadier_ (lemonade vender) who
had a royal license to sell spices, ices, barley water, lemonade, and
other such refreshments. He early added coffee to the list, and
attracted a large and distinguished patronage.

Procope, a keen-witted merchant, made his appeal to a higher class of
patrons than did Pascal and those who first followed him. He established
his cafe directly opposite the newly opened Comedie Francaise, in the
street then known as the rue des Fosses-St.-Germain, but now the rue de
l'Ancienne Comedie. A writer of the period has left this description of
the place: "The Cafe de Procope ... was also called the Antre [cavern]
de Procope, because it was very dark even in full day, and ill-lighted
in the evenings; and because you often saw there a set of lank, sallow
poets, who had somewhat the air of apparitions."

Because of its location, the Cafe de Procope became the gathering place
of many noted French actors, authors, dramatists, and musicians of the