rise and return to Brussels when the performance was over, travelling all night. * * * * * "In fair weather or foul," says Diderot in the opening lines of the _Neveu de Rameau_ "it is my custom, towards five in the evening, to stroll about the Palais Royal, where I muse silently on politics, love, taste or philosophy. If the weather be too cold or wet, I take refuge in the Café de la Régence, and there I amuse myself by watching the chess players; for Paris is the one place in the world, and the Café de la Régence the one place in Paris, where chess is played perfectly." The Café Procope and the Régence have been termed the Adam and Eve of the cafés of Paris. The former was the first coffee-house seen there, and was opened by one Gregory of Aleppo and a Sicilian, Procopio by name, shortly before the Comédie Française was transferred in 1689 to its new house in the present Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie. The famous café, where, too, ices were first sold, was situated opposite the theatre, and at once became a kind of ante-chamber to the Comédie, crowded with actors and dramatic authors, among whom were seen Voltaire, Crébillon and Piron. The Café de la Place du Palais Royal, the original apellation of the Régence, was founded shortly after the Procope, and became the favourite haunt of literary men, and especially of chess-players. Here the author of _Gil Blas_ beheld, in a vast salon brilliant with lustres and mirrors, a score of silent and grave personages, _pousseurs de bois_ (wood-shovers), playing at chess on marble tables, surrounded by others watching the games, amid a silence so profound that the movement of the pieces could alone be heard. If, however, we may credit a description of the famous hall of the chequer-board published in _Fraser's Magazine_, December 1840, the tempers of the players must have suffered a distressing deterioration since the times of Le Sage, for when the author of the article entered the café, in the winter of 1839, his ears were assailed by a "roar like that of the Regent's Park beast show at feeding-time." So great was the renown of the Parisian players that strangers from the four corners of the earth--Poles, Turks, Moors and Hindoos--made journeys to the Café de la Régence as to an arena where victory was esteemed final and complete. Not even on the Rialto of Venice, says the writer in _Fraser's_, in its most famous time, could so great a mixture of garbs and tongues be met. Here, among other literary monarchs who visited the café, came Voltaire and D'Alembert. Jean Jacques Rousseau, dressed as an Armenian, drew such crowds that the proprietor was forced to appeal for police protection, and the eccentric philosopher, while absorbed in play, was furtively sketched by St. Aubin. Here came, _incogniti_, the Emperor Joseph of Austria, brother of Marie Antoinette, and Emperor Paul of Russia, the latter betraying his