lory. They will muster very strong
to-morrow, if it be fine."

"But why to-morrow?" I replied. "I was under the impression that the
idea of the Reformist banquet in the Champs-Elysees had been abandoned,
so there will be no occasion for them to parade? Besides, that would be
on Tuesday only."

"It has been abandoned, but if you think that it will prevent them from
turning out, you are very much mistaken; at any rate, come and listen to
the preliminaries."

I promised him to come, but I had not the slightest idea that I was
going to witness a kind of mild prologue to a revolution.

Next morning turned out very fine--balmy spring weather--and as I
sauntered along the Boulevards Montmartre and Poissonniere to the place
of appointment the streets were already crowded with people in their
Sunday clothes. The place where I was to meet my English friend was
situated in the midst of a busy quarter, scarcely anything but
warehouses where they sold laces, and flowers, and silks; something like
the neighbourhood at the back of Cheapside. The wealthy tradesmen of
those days did not live in the outskirts of Paris, as they did later on;
and when my friend and I reached the principal cafe and restaurant on
the Place du Caire--I think it was called the Cafe Gregoire--there was
scarcely a table vacant. The habitues were, almost to a man, National
Guards, prosperous business men, considerably more anxious, as I found
out in a short time, to play a political part than to maintain public
tranquillity. If I remember rightly, one of them, a chemist and
druggist, who was pointed out to me then, became a deputy after the fall
of the Second Empire; and I may notice en passant that this same spot
was the political hothouse which produced, afterwards, Monsieur Tirard,
who started life as a small manufacturer of imitation jewellery, and who
rose to be Minister of Finances under the Third Republic.

The breakfast was simply excellent, the wine genuine throughout, the
coffee and cognac all that could be wished; and, when I asked my friend
to let me look at the bill, out of simple curiosity, or, rather, for the
sake of comparing prices with those of the Cafes de Paris and Riche, I
found that he had spent something less than eleven francs. At the Cafe
Riche it would have been twenty-five francs, and, at the present time,
one would be charged double that sum. These were the palmy days of the
Cuisine Francaise, or, to call it by another name, the C