In the Days of My Youth: A Novel
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CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE RUE DE L'ANCIENNE COMEDIE AND THE CAFE PROCOPE.
The Rue des Fosses-Saint-Germain-des-Pres and the Rue del'Ancienne Comedie are one and the same. As the Rue desFosses-Saint-Germain-des-Pres, it dates back to somewhere about thereign of Philippe Auguste; and as the Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie it takesits name and fame from the year 1689, when the old Theatre Francais wasopened on the 18th of April by the company known as Moliere'stroupe--Moliere being then dead, and Lully having succeeded him at theTheatre du Palais Royal.
In the same year, 1689, one Francois Procope, a Sicilian, conceived thehappy idea of hiring a house just opposite the new theatre, and thereopening a public refreshment-room, which at once became famous, not onlyfor the excellence of its coffee (then newly introduced into France),but also for being the favorite resort of all the wits, dramatists, andbeaux of that brilliant time. Here the latest epigrams were circulated,the newest scandals discussed, the bitterest literary cabals set onfoot. Here Jean Jacques brooded over his chocolate; and Voltaire drankhis mixed with coffee; and Dorat wrote his love-letters to MademoiselleSaunier; and Marmontel wrote praises of Mademoiselle Clairon; and theMarquis de Bievre made puns innumerable; and Duclos and Mercier wrotesatires, now almost forgotten; and Piron recited those verses which areat once his shame and his fame; and the Chevalier de St. Georges gavefencing lessons to his literary friends; and Lamothe, Freron,D'Alembert, Diderot, Helvetius, and all that wonderful company of wits,philosophers, encyclopaedists, and poets, that lit up as with a dyingglory the last decades of the old _regime_, met daily, nightly, towrite, to recite, to squabble, to lampoon, and some times to fight.
The year 1770 beheld, in the closing of the TheatreFrancais, the extinction of a great power in the Rue desFosses-Saint-Germain-des-Pres--for it was not, in fact, till the theatrewas no more a theatre that the street changed its name, and became theRue de L'Ancienne Comedie. A new house (to be on first opening investedwith the time-honored title of Theatre Francais, but afterwards to beknown as the Odeon) was now in progress of erection in the closeneighborhood of the Luxembourg. The actors, meanwhile, repaired to thelittle theatre of the Tuilleries. At length, in 1782,[2] the Rue deL'Ancienne Comedie was one evening awakened from its two years' lethargyby the echo of many footfalls, the glare of many flambeaux, and therattle of many wheels; for all Paris, all the wits and critics of theCafe Procope, all the fair shepherdesses and all the beaux seigneurs ofthe court of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI., were hastening on foot, inchairs, and in chariots, to the opening of the new house and theperformance of a new play! And what a play! Surely, not to consider ittoo curiously, a play which struck, however sportively, the key-note ofthe coming Revolution;--a play which, for the first time, displayedsociety literally in a state of _bouleversement_;--a play in which thegreed of the courtier, the venality of the judge, the empty glitter ofthe crown, were openly held up to scorn;--a play in which all the wit,audacity, and success are on the side of the _canaille_;--a play inwhich a lady's-maid is the heroine, and a valet canes his master, and agreat nobleman is tricked, outwitted, and covered with ridicule!
[2] 1782 is the date given by M. Hippolyte Lucas. Sainte-Beuve places ittwo years later.
This play, produced for the first time under the title of _La FolleJournee_, was written by one Caron de Beaumarchais--a man of wit, a manof letters, a man of the people, a man of nothing--and was destined toachieve immortality under its later title of _Le Mariage de Figaro_.
A few years later, and the Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie echoed daily andnightly to the dull rumble of Revolutionary tumbrils, and the heavytramp of Revolutionary mobs. Danton and Camille Desmoulins must havepassed through it habitually on their way to the Revolutionary Tribunal.Charlotte Corday (and this is a matter of history) did pass through itthat bright July evening, 1793, on her way to a certain gloomy housestill to be seen in the adjoining Rue de l'Ecole de Medecine, where shestabbed Marat in his bath.
But throughout every vicissitude of time and politics, though fashiondeserted the Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie, and actors migrated, and freshgenerations of wits and philosophers succeeded each other, the CafeProcope still held its ground and maintained its ancient reputation. Thetheatre (closed in less than a century) became the studio first of Grosand then of Gerard, and was finally occupied by a succession ofrestaurateurs but the Cafe Procope remained the Cafe Procope, and is theCafe Procope to this day.
The old street and all belonging to it--especially and peculiarly theCafe Procope---was of the choicest Quartier Latin flavor in the time ofwhich I write; in the pleasant, careless, impecunious days of my youth.A cheap and highly popular restaurateur named Pinson rented the oldtheatre. A _costumier_ hung out wigs, and masks, and debardeur garmentsnext door to the restaurateur. Where the fatal tumbril used to laborpast, the frequent omnibus now rattled gayly by; and the pavementstrodden of old by Voltaire, and Beaumarchais, and Charlotte Corday, werethronged by a merry tide of students and grisettes. Meanwhile the CafeProcope, though no longer the resort of great wits and famousphilosophers, received within its hospitable doors, and nourished withits indifferent refreshments, many a now celebrated author, painter,barrister, and statesman. It was the general rendezvous for students ofall kinds--poets of the Ecole de Droit, philosophers of the Ecole deMedecine, critics of the Ecole des Beaux Arts. It must however beadmitted that the poetry and criticism of these future great men wassomewhat too liberally perfumed with tobacco, and that into theirsystems of philosophy there entered a considerable element of grisette.
Such, at the time of my first introduction to it, was the famous CafeProcope.