es, in addition to the strip of Boulevards I have
already mentioned, were the Rue Le Peletier and the galleries of the
Passage de l'Opera. Both owed the preference over the other
thoroughfares to the immediate vicinity of the Opera, which had its
frontage in the last-named street, but was by no means striking or
monumental. Its architect, Debret, had to run the gauntlet of every kind
of satire for many a year after its erection; the bitterest and most
scathing of all was that, perhaps, of a journalist, who wrote one day
that, a provincial having asked him the way to the grand opera, he had
been obliged to answer, "Turn down the street, and it is the first large
gateway on your right."

But if the building itself was unimposing, the company gathered around
its entrance consisted generally of half a dozen men whose names were
then already household words in the musical world--Auber, Halevy,
Rossini and Meyerbeer, St. Georges, Adam. Now and then, though rarely
together, all of these names will frequently reappear in these notes.
The chief attractions, though, of the Rue Le Peletier were the famous
Italian restaurant of Paolo Broggi, patronized by a great many singers,
the favourite haunt of Mario, in the beginning of his career, and
l'Estaminet du Divan, which from being a very simple cafe indeed,
developed into a kind of politico-literary club under the auspices of a
number of budding men of letters, journalists, and the like, whose
modest purses were not equal to the charges of the Cafe Riche and
Tortoni, and who had gradually driven all more prosaic customers away. I
believe I was one of the few habitues who had no literary aspirations,
who did not cast longing looks to the inner portals of the offices of
the _National_, the bigwigs of which--Armand Marrast, Baron Dornes,
Gerard de Nerval, and others--sometimes made their appearance there,
though their restaurant in ordinary was the Cafe Hardi. The Estaminet du
Divan, however, pretended to a much more literary atmosphere than the
magnificent establishment on the boulevard itself. It is a positive fact
that the waiters in the former would ask, in the most respectful way
imaginable, "Does monsieur want Sue's or Dumas' feuilleton with his
cafe?" Not once but a dozen times I have heard the proprietor draw
attention to a remarkable article. Major Fraser, though he never dined
there, spent an hour or two daily in the Estaminet du Divan to read the
papers. He was a great favou