Middletown transcript., 1869-05-22
0otes of Grarel,
The Cafes and Lodging-IIouses Of Paris.
WriaenJor The Middletopn Transcript.
No. 13.


troduced coffee to France To him, are
due all these gay resorts, these myriads of
little half homes, where Paris of to day
shows itself, and lets all the world mix
with it.
At11 A. NJ. the crowd begins to centre
at these beautiful and cnticing resorts.
From the Fanbourgs St. Honore and st.
German come the gay carriages, passing
and repassing; mesdames the gloved,
waving good mornings to messieurs the
ungloved, under the awning; the gamin,
in his wooden shoes passes by, mimicking
some old beau who holds his cigar after
the manner of noted fop; an Italian
beggar dragging one foot wearily after the
other, and now and then adjusting his
heavy harp to sing out of a heavier heart;
and wagon, full of peasantry of the ad-
jacent country rattling by now and then.
Now the speculator, from breakfast, en-
route to the Bourse, arrives, gulps his
coffee, pockets two Jumps of sugar, and
rushes away to raise funds at his side the
picture vender, in coat that has seen bet-
ter days, drinks the same with slower ges-
lures and more enjoyment. There is no
aristocracy at the cafe. All through the
fashionable city, in students haunts, in
the quarters of the poor, in the magni-
fcent boulevards, Paris, at this hour. takes,
or has taken, its cup of coffee. Three
fourths of the French population that can
read and write go to these coffee-houscs to
read the newspapers; preferring to pay
six cents for paper and coffee, rather than
two cents for the paper alone.
Coffee was first sent up to France from
| Egypt; and more than two hundred years
after, in 1867, the Egyptians shivering in
the clear and bracing air of Paris, came to
the Exposition, and slipped the delightful
beverage in a cafe London had coffee
imported from Egypt about the same time,
but the Oriental stranger was not adopted.
About the year 1864, some Frenchman
conceived the idea of public coffee-house
and Immediately Marseilles had its cafe
Some time after a great festival was
held in Paris, and an Armenian drifted in
with the hundreds of spectators present,
and opened q cafe.
Rosseau and Voltaire used to go to the
Cafe Laurens; and there the former wrote
those couplets, which ten years later, were
the cause of the Punishment of their au-
| thor from France. A favorite dodge of
literary men used to be, to read sonnet,
essay, or philippe, before the crowd in
a cafe then, with kind permission, sell
copies, and next day so-and-so was famous.
The cafes of that time were only mere
shops, narrow, badly ventilated, full of
smoke, and poorly lighted by wax candles
in the evening. The second half of the
18th century was the commencement of
luxury and comfort; then, the mir
rors and marble tables were first seen
the precursor of the magnificencc of to day.
In 1872 there were but three of these
resorts in Paris, in 1854 there were be-
tween six and seven hundred. Billiards
were first introduced into them in the
time of Louis Fourteenth. In 1889,
Paris boasted eleven hundred coffee houses.
The French Revolution was born over a
cup of coffee, was discussed in a cafe, and
the cruelties were planned in these rendez-
vous. The royalst went to the Regence,
the revolutionist to the Procope, where
LAFAYETTE resorted. And when Frank
lin died. in 1870, the walls of the Pro-
cope were hung with black, and the frc-
quenters themselves wore mourning three
days.
At the Restoration, the three thousand
cafes glttered in all their glory. To day
there are four thousand! not rum shops,
nor poison breweries, nor hardly beer cs-
tablishmcnts but public parlors, where
one goes to write or to read. These pla-
ces are oases among the deserts of Paris
life. Rag-pickers, duchesses, soldiers,
business men, actors, opera singers, artists
and writer's, thieves and policemen, and
street peddlers, all have their different
cafes.
Nowhere may one be more alone than
in one of the immense, yellowish white
lodging houses of Paris; and descrip-
ton of one, perhaps cannot fail to interest
the reader. 1t stands between two streets
that is, it fronts upon one principal av-
cnue, and at its rear is narrow by street,
also reaching the central point after tor
tuous windings. On entering by day, as
you pass up the entrance-way from the
wide door, the concierge, in blouse and in
apron, salutes you; and he is the guard
ian of the whole building. The porters'
lodge at one side is noticed, whence the
apparition issued. 1t is generally a small
room, with shelves running around it.,
and numbers and hooks for keys below
them. There the dodgers, who are legion,
enter to take their wax candles, when they
come in for the night; and there they
leave their keys in the morning This
prevents burglary, absconding without
paying rent, and a dozen other miseries
of lodging houses in less fortunate cities.
The concierge is generally married, for
his labors are almost incessant, and would
be insupportablo if unshared by others.
The concierge rents the rooms, receives
the money when due, makes the beds, and
sweeps out the chambers, aided by hii
wife and sons; serves meals to all dodgers
who wish them in their rooms, posts let
ters, effects errands, receives and forwards
messages, and is expected, in person or b,