mong the other shops that occupied the
galleries overlooking the gardens.

_Life In The Early Coffee Houses_

Diderot tells in 1760, in his _Rameau's Nephew_, of the life and
frequenters of one of the Palais Royal coffee houses, the Regency (_Cafe
de la Regence_):

In all weathers, wet or fine, it is my practice to go toward five
o'clock in the evening to take a turn in the Palais Royal.... If
the weather is too cold or too wet I take shelter in the Regency
coffee house. There I amuse myself by looking on while they play
chess. Nowhere in the world do they play chess as skillfully as in
Paris and nowhere in Paris as they do at this coffee house; 'tis
here you see Legal the profound, Philidor the subtle, Mayot the
solid; here you see the most astounding moves, and listen to the
sorriest talk, for if a man be at once a wit and a great chess
player, like Legal, he may also be a great chess player and a sad
simpleton, like Joubert and Mayot.

The beginnings of the Regency coffee house are associated with the
legend that Lefevre, a Parisian, began peddling coffee in the streets of
Paris about the time Procope opened his cafe in 1689. The story has it
that Lefevre later opened a cafe near the Palais Royal, selling it in
1718 to one Leclerc, who named it the Cafe de la Regence, in honor of
the regent of Orleans, a name that still endures on a broad sign over
its doors. The nobility had their rendezvous there after having paid
their court to the regent.

[Illustration: THE CAFE FOY IN THE PALAIS ROYAL, 1789

From an engraving by Bosredon]

To name the patrons of the Cafe de la Regence in its long career would
be to outline a history of French literature for more than two
centuries. There was Philidor the "greatest theoretician of the
eighteenth century, better known for his chess than his music";
Robespierre, of the Revolution, who once played chess with a
girl--disguised as a boy--for the life of her lover; Napoleon, who was
then noted more for his chess than his empire-building propensities; and
Gambetta, whose loud voice, generally raised in debate, disturbed one
chess player so much that he protested because he could not follow his
game. Voltaire, Alfred de Musset; Victor Hugo, Theophile Gautier, J.J.
Rousseau, the Duke of Richelieu, Marshall Saxe, Buffon, Rivarol,
Fontenelle, Franklin, and Henry Murger are names still associated with
memories of this histori