But in the adjoining cabaret things were very different. Here the bearded exiles were enveloped in such an impenetrable cloud of smoke that they had forgotten all about their _milieu_. They had created here their own atmosphere, so to say. And a particularly villainous atmosphere it was—sulphurous and pestiferous. The chatter was incessant and strident. The clatter of the dominoes on the tables, the noise of the impact of the mugs and glasses—these mingled indistinguishably with the universal din. In this stifling atmosphere might be encountered some of the off-scourings of Continental cities. The political refugee, finding security in a country that could afford to treat him with absolute contempt, talked treason only when in his cups. Here was the practical politician also—the dynamitard, the artificer of bombs, the professor of the stiletto and the revolver. Scotland Yard had the dossier of every frequenter of the Café l’Étoile duly consigned by the police authorities of Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg. It was the most noisy, the most stuffy, the hottest, the dirtiest, the most polyglot, little hell in all London. I do not know, but I strongly suspect that a too constant solicitude on the part of Scotland Yard led to its disappearance. Its site is occupied by a restaurant called the West End Hotel, the reputable successor of an unsavoury progenitor. To William Gorman Wills I owe my introduction to most of the Soho restaurants. Wills liked the company he found in these places, and he liked the prices; for he was seldom well off. Money flowed from him in all directions, so that he never had much for his own use. It was lent or given in lumps as soon as it was received, a good deal of it finding its way into the pockets of impostors. For Wills was a man of genius—one of the few I have ever met—and inherited that financial incapacity which is the birthright of men of genius. He was an artist first of all, and had a studio in the Brompton Road, in a crescent which stood where the Consumptive Hospital now stands. He was a musician of distinction. He wrote a novel which would have made the reputation of any man who paid attention to the social arts which expedite the arrival of Fame. He will, perhaps, be still remembered by the public for his many contributions to the stage. His “Charles I.,” produced at the Lyceum for Irving, was one of the most poetical acting plays of the last century—Byron, and Lytton, and Sheridan Knowles, to the contrary, notwithstanding. In his search after French cookery he was instant. And I remember the delight with which he took me to Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, where a new café had been opened. The dining-saloon consisted of the two ground-floor rooms of an ordinary house thrown into one. Wills waved his arm as if to indicate to me fine spaces—like those of the Louvre for instance.