All these liqueurs, indeed, are rather ladies' drinks. So too are the cremes--mocha, tea, noyau, cumin, mint, ether, etc.; also the sirops, including orgeat, very refreshing in the summer-time. Masculine preferences are for beer, immense quantities of which are drunk, especially in the evening, or for fine champagne, the name bestowed upon superior brandy. However, ladies and gentlemen unite in disposing of half-frozen punch (_sorbets_) or eating ices--say a _tutti frutti_ at the Cafe Napolitain--ravishing mixtures of cold and passion, the fruits of the tropics imbedded in a slice of the North Pole. French drinks are, like French dishes, artistic preparations, and the French cafes artistic, pretty places, indispensable to the scenic completeness of things in France, if not to the comfort and well-being of the people. A landscape without water, a bride without a veil, a house without windows, would be something like France (Paris especially) without cafes. To take away its cafes would be to pluck out its eyes, to leave it dull and dead--food without appetite, marriage without love or the honeymoon. Its industries may give it sinew, muscle, bone and nerve; the Institute may give it brains; but the cafes--they are its life-blood and its pulse. The French cultivate even a love of home in going to the cafe. For what is a love of home? It is certainly not a mere local attachment, such as the cat has for the particular hearth-rug where she dozes by day or the particular tiles and water-spouts where she howls by night. It is rather the love of family and friendly union, in which the French take especial delight, gathering together in little knots by the open window, in the garden, on the sidewalk, or, it may be, in the cafe, talking in the leaping, emancipated, touch-and-go style, in the merry, vaulting style in which they excel, on all the lighter topics. But the desire to economize keeps away a great many people, for the French are very economical. In the great army of the _bourgeois_, as well as in the great army of the _blouses_--many of whom could be bourgeois if they chose--whole families, husbands, fathers, brothers, sons, abstain from going to the cafe, either alone or accompanied, from Christmas to New Year's and New Year's to Christmas. Neither would you find MacMahon, Thiers or Victor Hugo at the cafe. The recognized great, the nobility and high officials, contrary to what perhaps is commonly supposed, are rarely to be seen there. They meet in some more private way.