c cafe: Marmontel and Philidor played there at
their favorite game of chess. Diderot tells in his _Memoirs_ that his
wife gave him every day nine sous to get his coffee there. It was in
this establishment that he worked on his _Encyclopedia_.

Chess is today still in favor at the Regence, although the players are
not, as were the earlier patrons, obliged to pay by the hour for their
tables with extra charges for candles placed by the chess-boards. The
present Cafe de la Regence is in the rue St.-Honore, but retains in
large measure its aspect of olden days.

Michelet, the historian, has given us a rhapsodic pen picture of the
Parisian cafes under the regency:

Paris became one vast cafe. Conversation in France was at its
zenith. There were less eloquence and rhetoric than in '89. With
the exception of Rousseau, there was no orator to cite. The
intangible flow of wit was as spontaneous as possible. For this
sparkling outburst there is no doubt that honor should be ascribed
in part to the auspicious revolution of the times, to the great
event which created new customs, and even modified human
temperament--the advent of coffee.

Its effect was immeasurable, not being weakened and neutralized as
it is today by the brutalizing influence of tobacco. They took
snuff, but did not smoke. The cabaret was dethroned, the ignoble
cabaret, where, during the reign of Louis XIV, the youth of the
city rioted amid wine-casks in the company of light women. The
night was less thronged with chariots. Fewer lords found a resting
place in the gutter. The elegant shop, where conversation flowed, a
salon rather than a shop, changed and ennobled its customs. The
reign of coffee is that of temperance. Coffee, the beverage of
sobriety, a powerful mental stimulant, which, unlike spirituous
liquors, increases clearness and lucidity; coffee, which suppresses
the vague, heavy fantasies of the imagination, which from the
perception of reality brings forth the sparkle and sunlight of
truth; coffee anti-erotic....

The three ages of coffee are those of modern thought; they mark the
serious moments of the brilliant epoch of the soul.

Arabian coffee is the pioneer, even before 1700. The beautiful
ladies that you see in the fashionable rooms of Bonnard, sipping
from their tiny cups--they are enjoying the aroma of the