let canes his master, and a
great nobleman is tricked, outwitted, and covered with ridicule!

[2] 1782 is the date given by M. Hippolyte Lucas. Sainte-Beuve places it
two years later.

This play, produced for the first time under the title of _La Folle
Journee_, was written by one Caron de Beaumarchais--a man of wit, a man
of letters, a man of the people, a man of nothing--and was destined to
achieve immortality under its later title of _Le Mariage de Figaro_.

A few years later, and the Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie echoed daily and
nightly to the dull rumble of Revolutionary tumbrils, and the heavy
tramp of Revolutionary mobs. Danton and Camille Desmoulins must have
passed through it habitually on their way to the Revolutionary Tribunal.
Charlotte Corday (and this is a matter of history) did pass through it
that bright July evening, 1793, on her way to a certain gloomy house
still to be seen in the adjoining Rue de l'Ecole de Medecine, where she
stabbed Marat in his bath.

But throughout every vicissitude of time and politics, though fashion
deserted the Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie, and actors migrated, and fresh
generations of wits and philosophers succeeded each other, the Cafe
Procope still held its ground and maintained its ancient reputation. The
theatre (closed in less than a century) became the studio first of Gros
and then of Gerard, and was finally occupied by a succession of
restaurateurs but the Cafe Procope remained the Cafe Procope, and is the
Cafe Procope to this day.

The old street and all belonging to it--especially and peculiarly the
Cafe Procope---was of the choicest Quartier Latin flavor in the time of
which I write; in the pleasant, careless, impecunious days of my youth.
A cheap and highly popular restaurateur named Pinson rented the old
theatre. A _costumier_ hung out wigs, and masks, and debardeur garments
next door to the restaurateur. Where the fatal tumbril used to labor
past, the frequent omnibus now rattled gayly by; and the pavements
trodden of old by Voltaire, and Beaumarchais, and Charlotte Corday, were
thronged by a merry tide of students and grisettes. Meanwhile the Cafe
Procope, though no longer the resort of great wits and famous
philosophers, received within its hospitable doors, and nourished with
its indifferent refreshments, many a now celebrated author, painter,
barrister, and statesman. It was the general rendezvous for students of
all kinds--poets of the Ecole de Droit, philos