Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-06-20
OLD CAFES OF PARIS
PASSING OF FAMOUS RESTAU-
RANTS OF FRENCH CAPITAL.
Places That Catered TO Sensitized
PalRtes and in Which History
Was Made.
Paris Cor. London Express.

Paris Cor. London Express.
Let us go to the last of the cafes to tax
of the last Of the cooks said the boulevar-
der
And we went into the little white Care
Napolitain. 1t was about five o'clock, the
hour OF the pre-prandial absnthe, when
in these days OF Anglo-saxon hustle has
so nearly died out Of Partisan habits.
Have y-ou noticed" said the bou'eva
der. tina, the apcg. N is becoming obsolete.
like the nancur and like the epigrammatist?
Dinner. OF course. became obsolete long
ago
Whatever do you mean?" l asked.
The boulevardier laughed and sighed He
is a little wiry man. with gray eyes which
CLEAN out at you from under bushy eye
brows which are iron gray. His hair. cut
la Bressant short and straight without a
parting. is gray, too. He dresses In gray
always, and his hat is fiat brlmmed the
shape OF hat which Meihsc wore, and
Dumas fills. and many others under whose
hats were the brains Of their time.
The boulevardier is proud of the fact
that he has done nothing all his life except
live in Paris. He will never write his me-
moirs but II he could be persuaded to do
so they would be invaluable.
Mention Gambetta. Gounod. LORD Lytton,
Aurelien Scholl. Waldeck-Rousseau. Sarcey.
Henner, or Bibi-la-Puree to him, and-"Un
de mes bons amis," the boulevardier will
remark quietly And if he be IN the humor
he will tel you tales and anecdotes of the
man you have mentioned. such nobody
with less talent than Nine. de Sevigne or
Lord Chesterfield could crystalline into
print.
Good Old Days.
LES Bignons." said the boulevardier.
Yes. Theirs were the good old days.
when people ate not for mere nourishment.
but for the poesy of eating. The two
Ists- 10 ~, &c !,
er of the Cafe Richie who died about a
week ago-were kings or high priests in
their way.
THE art of dining has been lost in
Paris. and ii will never be found again.
There are clever cooks nowadays. no
doubt. but there are no more high priests
OF food as there were in the days when
Bignon l and Bignon III ruled over the
Cafe Foy and the Cafe Richie. and Casimir
was the white-capped king of the Maison
Doree. Casimir is alive still. l believe
/ remember meeting him on the day that
the Maison Doree closed its doors. He
was crying. but he told me that he was
glad that the Maison Doree was closed
for his one fear had been that 1t would
degenerate into a feeding place
"Casimir had catered for the sensitised
palates of Rossini of the Due de Morny
and of Offenbach And there was always
rivalry between the Cafe Richie and the
Maison Doree. Nowadays. the Maison
DOree has vanished altogether. and the
care hlCne mas become n BriSSerle Wneie
people drink beer with their dinner and
eat to music"
And Bignon's-the other Bignon's in the
avenue de fOpera-has now become the
Cafe de Paris. The Cafe Richie in the
olden days was the home of the aristocracy
of Bohemia and of brains. while the aris-
tocracy OF birth used to dine at the Maison
Doree. where-it is the one thing present
day journalists seem to remember OF 1.-THE
I)fIl az Hamilton downstairs
killed
The Cafe Richie, too. had it's tragedy, for
ii there that Gilbert, the singer. lost
his life. A procession was passing and Gil
bert stepped out of window of the entire
sol onto a glass mearquise. The glass panes
broke he fell through them and dashed his
brains out on the pavement
IL was at the Cafe Richie that de Nillemts-
SAINT the founder of the Figaro. enunciated
his word-famous dictum that TO run
newspaper successfully all that was needed
was one good idea a day. 1t was at the
Cafe Richie that Aureien Scholl. master of
epigram. went every day for his game OF
dominoes, his absinthe and his dinner and
where the thousand and one good things
which sparkled out of his conversation over
coffee at Tortonis afterward were Matched
behind his monocle.
Many Celebrities.
Stevens, the Belgian painter, who has
a street named after him in Paris of to-
day and the publisher. Charpentier. who
gave Zola's work to the world. made the
Cafe Richie their headquarters at dinner
time Raphael Bschoffshelm, who died the
other day. habitually dined there. and Of
fenbach is said to have raped out the
catchiest tunes of "Orphee aux Enfers
and OF Ia Belle Helene" with knife on
his plate while he was waiting for his din
ner. go
Comparatively modern politics. too. will
have their record In the annals of the Cafe
l. - -ff far, LNr
Il was there, in the room which overlooked
the boulevard. that Gen Boulanger was
the guest at the banquet which was to have
preceded his coup d'etat, and did precede
his fall.
The boulevardier was talking of these
things. ard he stopped suddenly and
shrugged his shoulders. poet and two
well-known dramatists had just come into
the cafe. The poet called for Vichy water,
one of the dramatists took "grenadine au
kirsch." the other what the bouiavardier
calls "viskisoda.'
Qu'est-ce que vous voulez que je vous
dise?'' he said as he nodded To the trio
Nowadays men write for worldwide
circulation, and for the motor cars which
they keep on it. Scholl would have called
them 'usines litteraires literary factories).
and Scholl would have been right
II dined with one OF those men last
week" The boulevardier shuddered. He
ordered what the waiter told him to, and
could not remember what II was five min
utes afterwards. Bignon was sensible.
When he saw that what | call the tele-
phonetic spirit had got into the life of Paris
he left Paris and went down to end his
days in the country. Que Voulez-vous? /
could not do so. have lived on the boule-
Yards all my life and should like to die
here in the Napolitain at the hour OF the
aperitif
The men are not the same men. their
talk IS not the same talk; but in the clouds
OF thei- tobacco smoke and mine l see the
dear old life OF leisure and of wit. and
forge; the Metro the steamdrven tram
cars and the telephones OF the Paris OF to-
day-the Paris in which dinner has ceased
10 be rite. and has become a crime of lese-
digestion"
Morality and the Price of Whisky.
From the Toronto Globe