Morning journal and courier., 1889-04-15
NO. S9

rendezvous of military and naval osicars
 who, on their brief visits to Paris. are snra
 to find some friend there with whom to dis
 cuss the latest promotions and the newest "a
 forms invented by their hierarchic chief the
 Minister of War, and in case of need they
 can appeal for information to the habitues. who are not all army men, but who have a
 particular affection for all that is military, and who sit at the little marble tables drink
 absinthe and are invariably decorated. One
 may be retired captain with rubicund
 nose, long, shaggy mustaches, goatee beard,
 and in his button-hole the rosette of the Le- zion of Honor, won perhaps by good service
 in Africa. With his hands in his pockets he
 sits heavily on the red velvet divan, prop
 ping his gross body against the back, and never removing his rather rakish hat from his denuded skull. Another may be horse dealer or an army contractor, whose sympa- thies and interests make him prefer to drink his green poison in military cafe A third, corpulent, apopletic, faded and sulky, smokes stolidly, with a cross expression on
 his countenance, his temper having been ir- remediably soured by long years of sedenta- ry ennui in the bureau of the War depart
 ment
 Then there is the Cafe de la Paix, the ren- dezvous of the gilded youth of Paris, and of
 the rich strangers, who sit at the little round
 tables placed on the sidewalk and marvel at the animation and variety of the boulevard.
 ", and st almost any hour, specimens of all the nationalities of the earth-Brazlians scin- tillating with diamonds, Englishmen con- spicuous by their strange headgear and light-colored clothes. Chinese clad in radiant silks, Arab sheiks who mar the majesty of their turban and burnoose by wearing yel- low kid French gloves stitched with black And in the midst of this cosmopolitan con- pany the young French 'dude" sucks the handle of his cane, cramped and angular in his tight fitting garments, dull-e eyed, stolid and proud of the weary emptiness of his ex- istence. At the Cafe de Madrid may be seen the members of the radical newspaper press, intermingled with business men and miscel- laneous idlers, forthe cafe is no longer the almost exclusively political rendezvous which 1t was in the later years of the em. pire, when Ranc, Spuller, Gambetta and Valles were the chief orators in this sort of forum, where most of the prominent politi- clans and Journalists of the present day took their first lessons in Republican arms. This was about 1886, when on the other side of the river the future chiefs of the Commune Raoul, Rigault, Tridon, Dascosta and Lan- dowski, began to frequent the Cafe de la Re- naissance on the Boulevard Saint Michel. In 1871, when these gentlemen came into power at the Hotel de Vile, they and their para sites, with their long boots, clanking spurs and brilliant uniforms, transferred their cus- tom to the Cafe de Madrid; but as they paid only when they pleased, and were pleased to pay never, the cafe soon closed through the ruin of the proprietor. The Cafe de Ma drid is now noisy and pestiferous cavern, where the voice of the takers rises with diff fculty above the chatter of the dominoes in- cessantly shaken up on the marble tables and the rattling of dice on innumerable backgammon boards. Opposite, at the Case de Suede, the habitues are lyric and drama tic artists, and in the room on the first floor the diamond merchants meet to do business and to play dominoes. Next door the Cafe pes Varieties used to bs the favorite resort of Rochefort, Munger, Barriere and other vau- devillists and plsywrights, and it was here, at the table where Theodore de Banville and Baudelaire presided, that Catulle Mendes founded the Parnassian school of poetry which has fourished since, and is now rep resented in the French Academy by Coppee and Sully Prudhomme. But gradually puffed up by the glory of his customers, the proprietor grew proud and insolent, and one day the literary men left in a body, and since then the Cafe des Varieties has re- mained nondescript and unrenowned.