But the cafe is nevertheless a very charming place. It is a place where it is permitted to you to surrender yourself to the most delicious reflections. You are in the presence of humming-birds, not ostriches or owls. The people are smoking cigarettes, or cigars at worst, not meerschaums. The establishment itself is a dazzle of decoration, a little corner of the Louvre. There is no shouting or swearing, but a pleasing hum. The calls of messieurs and the replies of garcons resolve themselves into a confused lulling sound. If you are well, and your conscience does not trouble you--and even if it does--you can select a quiet corner and dream away the livelong day. The air is nerve-slackening. You feel perfectly at your ease. You can think of nothing to apprehend--no incursion of your lady friends designing to reason with the proprietor and perhaps hold a prayer-meeting on the sidewalk; no incursion of the police, no row. Everybody is placable and quiet--preserves indeed a sort of deferential attitude toward his neighbor--and not only when he comes in, but again when he goes out, salutes the dame de comptoir--the lady superintendent, that is (not unfrequently the wife of the proprietor)--who sits enthroned in a little boxlike place superintending the delivery of drinks and making change. This matter of saluting, as the reader knows, is a deference which every Frenchman considers due to the great man or woman who, at the particular time of his entrance or exit, may chance to be in a particular apartment; and in the case of cafes, if the dame de comptoir were not in her place, he would salute the guests; and if there were but one guest, that one would be expected to return the salute, it being meant for him alone.