To name the patrons of the Cafe de la Regence in its long career would be to outline a history of French literature for more than two centuries. There was Philidor the "greatest theoretician of the eighteenth century, better known for his chess than his music"; Robespierre, of the Revolution, who once played chess with a girl--disguised as a boy--for the life of her lover; Napoleon, who was then noted more for his chess than his empire-building propensities; and Gambetta, whose loud voice, generally raised in debate, disturbed one chess player so much that he protested because he could not follow his game. Voltaire, Alfred de Musset; Victor Hugo, Theophile Gautier, J.J. Rousseau, the Duke of Richelieu, Marshall Saxe, Buffon, Rivarol, Fontenelle, Franklin, and Henry Murger are names still associated with memories of this historic cafe: Marmontel and Philidor played there at their favorite game of chess. Diderot tells in his _Memoirs_ that his wife gave him every day nine sous to get his coffee there. It was in this establishment that he worked on his _Encyclopedia_. Chess is today still in favor at the Regence, although the players are not, as were the earlier patrons, obliged to pay by the hour for their tables with extra charges for candles placed by the chess-boards. The present Cafe de la Regence is in the rue St.-Honore, but retains in large measure its aspect of olden days. Michelet, the historian, has given us a rhapsodic pen picture of the Parisian cafes under the regency: Paris became one vast cafe. Conversation in France was at its zenith. There were less eloquence and rhetoric than in '89. With the exception of Rousseau, there was no orator to cite. The intangible flow of wit was as spontaneous as possible. For this sparkling outburst there is no doubt that honor should be ascribed in part to the auspicious revolution of the times, to the great event which created new customs, and even modified human temperament--the advent of coffee. Its effect was immeasurable, not being weakened and neutralized as it is today by the brutalizing influence of tobacco. They took snuff, but did not smoke. The cabaret was dethroned, the ignoble cabaret, where, during the reign of Louis XIV, the youth of the city rioted amid wine-casks in the company of light women. The night was less thronged with chariots. Fewer lords found a resting place in the gutter. The elegant shop, where conversation flowed, a salon rather than a shop, changed and ennobled its customs. The reign of coffee is that of temperance. Coffee, the beverage of sobriety, a powerful mental stimulant, which, unlike spirituous liquors, increases clearness and lucidity; coffee, which suppresses the vague, heavy fantasies of the imagination, which from the perception of reality brings forth the sparkle and sunlight of truth; coffee anti-erotic....