Near by was the establishment of the famous Italian _restaurateur_, Paolo Broggi, the resort of many singers, and the Estaminet du Divan, a sort of humble counterpart of the Café Riche or the Café des Anglais, but which proclaimed a much more literary atmosphere than many of the bigger establishments on the boulevards. Vandam relates of this house of call that "it is a positive fact that the _garçon_ would ask, 'Does monsieur desire Sue's or Dumas' _feuilleton_ with his _café_?'" Of the Opera which was burned in 1781, Dumas, in "The Queen's Necklace," has a chapter devoted to "Some Words about the Opera." It is an interesting, albeit a rather superfluous, interpolation in a romance of intrigue and adventure: "The Opera, that temple of pleasure at Paris, was burned in the month of June, 1781. Twenty persons had perished in the ruins; and, as it was the second time within eighteen years that this had happened, it created a prejudice against the place where it then stood, in the Palais Royal, and the king had ordered its removal to a less central spot. The place chosen was La Porte St. Martin. "The king, vexed to see Paris deprived for so long of its Opera, became as sorrowful as if the arrivals of grain had ceased, or bread had risen to more than seven sous the quartern loaf. It was melancholy to see the nobility, the army, and the citizens without their after-dinner amusement; and to see the promenades thronged with the unemployed divinities, from the chorus-singers to the prima donnas. "An architect was then introduced to the king, full of new plans, who promised so perfect a ventilation, that even in case of fire no one could be smothered. He would make eight doors for exit, besides five large windows placed so low that any one could jump out of them. In the place of the beautiful hall of Moreau he was to erect a building with ninety-six feet of frontage toward the boulevard, ornamented with eight caryatides on pillars forming three entrance-doors, a bas-relief above the capitals, and a gallery with three windows. The stage was to be thirty-six feet wide, the theatre seventy-two feet deep and eighty across, from one wall to the other. He asked only seventy-five days and nights before he opened it to the public. "This appeared to all a mere gasconade, and was much laughed at. The king, however, concluded the agreement with him. Lenoir set to work, and kept his word. But the public feared that a building so quickly erected could not be safe, and when it opened no one would go. "Even the few courageous ones who did go to the first representation of 'Adele de Ponthieu' made their wills first. The architect was in despair. He came to the king to consult him as to what was to be done.