Demandant s’ils avoient du bon vin, Et qu’on luy emplist du plus fin Mais qu’il fust blanc et amoureux.” We see that our poet-tramp hated adulteraters of wine (“les taverniers qui brouillent nostre vin”) not less sincerely than his old Roman colleague Horace. In his older days he regretted the dissipation of his youth, sadly reflecting upon what a comfortable age he could have now if ... “J’eusse maison et couche molle! Mais quoy? je fuyoye l’escolle, Comme faict le mauvays enfant.... En escrivant cette parole A peu que le cueur ne me fend.” The tavern of the “Pomme de Pin” stood near the Madeleine Church--not the famous one we all know, but an old building in the “cité,” Rue de la Lanterne, which was pulled down in the time of the Revolution. Rabelais loved the place and praised this pineapple higher than the golden apple that young Paris once gave to Venus, thus creating endless troubles among men and gods:-- “La Pomme de Pin qui vaut mieux Que celle d’or, dont fut troublée Toute la divine assemblée.” Sainte-Beuve has called this tavern, connected with so many proud names in French literature, “la véritable taverne littéraire, le vrai cabaret classique,” a title which to-day is deserved by the “Cabaret du Chat Noir,” the creation of such gifted artists as Henri Rivière, Willette, and, last but not least, Steinlen, the painter of its sign. Next in literary celebrity stands “La Croix de Lorraine,” where Molière used to relax from his strenuous life as poet and actor and get merry over the blinking glass, “assez pour vers le soir être en goguettes.” Among the guests ponderous Boileau sometimes appeared, although he seems to have taken his admonition in the “Art poétique,” “connaissez la ville,” rather seriously and to have made quite extensive studies of the Parisian public-houses. We find him in the “Diable,” who had his quarters in those days very near the Sainte Chapelle, and in “La Tête Noire,” a counterpart of “The Golden Head” in Malines where Dürer lodged on his journey through the Netherlands. It would be amusing to count how many immortal works have been created over a tavern table. Have we not heard that in our days Mascagni wrote the incomparable overture to his “Cavalleria Rusticana” on the little marble table of a modern café? Racine is supposed to have written his “Plaideurs” on the tavern table of the “Mouton Blanc” in Paris, and this happy circumstance seems to have affected his style very agreeably and to have made the play easier for a modern reader than the solemn dramas which are so difficult to enjoy if one does not happen to be a Frenchman. How attractive a place this “Mouton Blanc” was we might imagine from the little rhyme:-- “Ah! que n’ai-je pour sépulture Les Deux Torches ou le Mouton!”