When coffee houses began to crop up rapidly in Paris, the majority centered in the Palais Royal, "that garden spot of beauty, enclosed on three sides by three tiers of galleries," which Richelieu had erected in 1636, under the name of Palais Cardinal, in the reign of Louis XIII. It became known as the Palais Royal in 1643; and soon after the opening of the Cafe de Procope, it began to blossom out with many attractive coffee stalls, or rooms, sprinkled among the other shops that occupied the galleries overlooking the gardens. _Life In The Early Coffee Houses_ Diderot tells in 1760, in his _Rameau's Nephew_, of the life and frequenters of one of the Palais Royal coffee houses, the Regency (_Cafe de la Regence_): In all weathers, wet or fine, it is my practice to go toward five o'clock in the evening to take a turn in the Palais Royal.... If the weather is too cold or too wet I take shelter in the Regency coffee house. There I amuse myself by looking on while they play chess. Nowhere in the world do they play chess as skillfully as in Paris and nowhere in Paris as they do at this coffee house; 'tis here you see Legal the profound, Philidor the subtle, Mayot the solid; here you see the most astounding moves, and listen to the sorriest talk, for if a man be at once a wit and a great chess player, like Legal, he may also be a great chess player and a sad simpleton, like Joubert and Mayot. The beginnings of the Regency coffee house are associated with the legend that Lefevre, a Parisian, began peddling coffee in the streets of Paris about the time Procope opened his cafe in 1689. The story has it that Lefevre later opened a cafe near the Palais Royal, selling it in 1718 to one Leclerc, who named it the Cafe de la Regence, in honor of the regent of Orleans, a name that still endures on a broad sign over its doors. The nobility had their rendezvous there after having paid their court to the regent. [Illustration: THE CAFE FOY IN THE PALAIS ROYAL, 1789 From an engraving by Bosredon]