ophers of the Ecole de
Medecine, critics of the Ecole des Beaux Arts. It must however be
admitted that the poetry and criticism of these future great men was
somewhat too liberally perfumed with tobacco, and that into their
systems of philosophy there entered a considerable element of grisette.

Such, at the time of my first introduction to it, was the famous Cafe
Procope.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF BREAKFAST.

"Now this, _mon cher_," said Mueller, taking off his hat with a flourish
to the young lady at the _comptoir_, "is the immortal Cafe Procope."

I looked round, and found myself in a dingy, ordinary sort of Cafe, in
no wise differing from any other dingy, ordinary sort of Cafe in that
part of Paris. The decorations were ugly enough to be modern. The
ceiling was as black with gas-fumes and tobacco smoke as any other
ceiling in any other estaminet in the Quartier Latin. The waiters looked
as waiters always look before midday--sleepy, discontented, and
unwashed. A few young men of the regular student type were scattered
about here and there at various tables, reading, smoking, chatting,
breakfasting, and reading the morning papers. In an alcove at the upper
end of the second room (for there were two, one opening from the other)
stood a blackened, broken-nosed, plaster bust of Voltaire, upon the
summit of whose august wig some irreverent customer had perched a
particularly rakish-looking hat. Just in front of this alcove and below
the bust stood a marble-topped table, at one end of which two young men
were playing dominoes to the accompaniment of the matutinal absinthe.

"And this," said Mueller, with another flourish, "is the still more
immortal table of the still more supremely immortal Voltaire. Here he
was wont to rest his sublime elbows and sip his _demi-tasse_. Here, upon
this very table, he wrote that famous letter to Marie Antoinette that
Freron stole, and in revenge for which he wrote the comedy called
_l'Ecossaise_; but of this admirable satire you English, who only know
Voltaire in his Henriade and his history of Charles the Twelfth, have
probably never heard till this moment! _Eh bien_! I'm not much wiser
than you--so never mind. I'll be hanged if I've ever read a line of it.
Anyhow, here is the table, and at this other end of it we'll have our
breakfast."

It was a large, old-fashioned, Louis Quatorze piece of furniture, the
top of which, formed from a single slab of some kind of gray an