le Desmoulins, a youthful journalist, mounted a table and
began the harangue that precipitated the first overt act of the French
Revolution. Blazing with a white hot frenzy, he so played upon the
passions of the mob that at the conclusion of his speech he and his
followers "marched away from the Cafe on their errand of Revolution."
The Bastille fell two days later.

As if abashed by its reputation as the starting point of the mob spirit
of the Revolution, Cafe Foy became in after years a sedate
gathering-place of artists and literati. Up to its close it was
distinguished among other famous Parisian cafes for its exclusiveness
and strictly enforced rule of "no smoking."

Even from the first the Parisian cafes catered to all classes of
society; and, unlike the London coffee houses, they retained this
distinctive characteristic. A number of them early added other liquid
and substantial refreshments, many becoming out-and-out restaurants.

_Coffee-House Customs and Patrons_

Coffee's effect on Parisians is thus described by a writer of the latter
part of the eighteenth century:

I think I may safely assert that it is to the establishment of so
many cafes in Paris that is due the urbanity and mildness
discernible upon most faces. Before they existed, nearly everybody
passed his time at the cabaret, where even business matters were
discussed. Since their establishment, people assemble to hear what
is going on, drinking and playing only in moderation, and the
consequence is that they are more civil and polite, at least in
appearance.

Montesquieu's satirical pen pictured in his _Persian Letters_ the
earliest cafes as follows:

In some of these houses they talk news; in others, they play
draughts. There is one where they prepare the coffee in such a
manner that it inspires the drinkers of it with wit; at least, of
all those who frequent it, there is not one person in four who does
not think he has more wit after he has entered that house. But what
offends me in these wits is that they do not make themselves useful
to their country.

Montesquieu encountered a geometrician outside a coffee house on the
Pont Neuf, and accompanied him inside. He describes the incident in this
manner:

I observe that our geometrician was received there with the utmost
officiousness, and that the coffee house boys paid him much more
respect than tw