"_Déjeûners froids et chauds_," is an inscription which now generally figures on the exterior of a Parisian coffeehouse, beside that of "_Thé à l'Anglaise, Café à la crême, Limonade, &c_." Solids are here the taste of the times. Two ladies, who very gallantly invited themselves to breakfast at my apartments the other morning, were ready to turn the house out of the window, when they found that I presented to them nothing more than tea, coffee, and chocolate. I was instantly obliged to provide cold fowl, ham, oysters, white wine, &c. I marvel not at the strength and vigour of these French belles. In appetite, they would cope with an English ploughman, who had just turned up an acre of wholesome land on an empty stomach. Now, though a _thé_ may be considered as a substitute for a supper, it cannot, in point of agreeableness, be compared to a _petit souper_. If a man must sup, and I am no advocate for regular suppers, these were the suppers to my fancy. A select number of persons, well assorted, assembled at ten o'clock, after the opera was concluded, and spent a couple of hours in a rational manner. Sometimes a _petit souper_ consisted of a simple _tête-à-tête_, sometimes of a _partie quarrée_, or the number was varied at pleasure. But still, in a _petit souper_, not only much gaiety commonly prevailed, but also a certain _épanchement de coeur_, which animated the conversation to such a degree as to render a party of this description the _acme_ of social intercourse, "the feast of reason and the flow of soul." Under the old _régime_, not a man was there in office, from the _ministre d'état_ to the _commis_, who did not think of making himself amends for the fatigues of the morning by a _petit souper_: these _petits soupers_, however, were, in latter times, carried to an excessive pitch of luxurious extravagance. But for refinements attempted in luxury, though, I confess, of a somewhat dissolute nature, our countryman eclipsed all the French _bons vivans_ in originality of conception. Being in possession of an ample fortune, and willing to enjoy it according to his fancy, he purchased in Paris a magnificent house, but constructed on a small scale, where every thing that the most refined luxury could suggest was assembled. The following is the account given by one of his friends, who had been an eye-witness to his manner of living. "Mr. B---- had made it a rule to gratify his five senses to the highest degree of enjoyment of which they were susceptible. An exquisite table, perfumed apartments, the charms of music and painting; in a word, every thing most enchanting that nature, assisted by art, could produce, successively flattered his sight, his taste, his smell, his hearing, and his feeling.