The Café de Progrès stands in the Rue de ---- half-way down to the river. It's the place where merchants most do congregate. The manager of the Banque de ---- leads them. The place that the first bank manager in the town frequents daily is thereby given a tone which no other café in D---- can have. So it is the first among the lounging-places only. That leads to a rough division of all the cafés in the town into two great classes: those you lounge and drink in, and those to which you go for a meal. In the one you will see the French relaxing (there are some rich "retired" gentlemen who do nothing _but_ relax); in the other you will see the English officer satisfying his hunger more or less incontinently. Need I say which is the place of interest? Our favourite seat used to be upon a small dais in recess overlooking the billiard-table immediately and the whole room generally. Its only disadvantage was that it did not overlook that other recess--separated from it by a partition--in which Thérèse mixed the drinks and brewed the coffee. The billiard-table occupied one-half the room; the other half centred round the stove. The tables were arranged in concentric circles about it. The regular denizens of the place--the men who lived there--would, during the snow, come early, occupy the innermost circle of tables, and omit to move out until sundown. And sometimes they would stay far into the night. The retired business-man is more amenable to a sense of cosiness than any other mortal of his age. He would get Thérèse to bring him snacks--they were not meals--at intervals during the day. And there he would settle himself, with his boon companions, for twelve hours on end. Cards is the diversion: cards and dominoes. The habitual inner circle there is made up by the proprietor, the ex-Mayor of the town, _le directeur de la Banque de ----_, and the manager of the _Usine de ----_. The last named used to have inscrutable spells of absence--inscrutable until it was explained that the occasion was the visit of M. ---- the elder, himself, from Paris--a man of iron and the proprietor of the _Usine_. He it was who quelled with his own hand and voice an ugly strike of his _ouvriers_ who dared ask for more money.