[Illustration: THE CRIES OF PARIS: "OLD CLOTHES, OLD LACES!" Facsimile of an old French plate] Previous to the restaurants, the kitchens of the inns, which were usually poor, and the tables d'hôte of some of the hotels had meagrely provided for the wants of those who were unable to provide for themselves in houses of their own. Towards the end of the century the restaurant of Beauvilliers and others were flourishing, that of Beauvilliers closing in 1793 to be reopened with less success at the termination of the Revolution. Robert, former chef of a _fermier-général_, the distinguished Méot and his scholars Véry, Riche, Hardy, and Roze, were among notable masters of the time. The "Manuel des Amphitryons" (1808) pronounced Robert the elder "the greatest cook of the present age." About the beginning of the century the table of the great Cambacères was the most renowned in Paris, and M. d'Aigrefeuille was considered the most eminent epicure. The Prince de Talleyrand was also a most distinguished amateur, having been termed "the first fork of his time." At the advanced age of eighty, it was his custom to spend nearly an hour every morning with his cook, discussing the dishes which were to compose the dinner, his only repast. It had long been one of his tenets that a careful and healthful cuisine, presided over by the best artist he could procure, would tend to preserve his health and forefend serious maladies far better than a staff of physicians. For a period of twelve years Carême was his culinary director, with carte blanche to exercise his subtlest skill. Two things, Talleyrand used to say, are essential in life--to give good dinners and keep well with women, a precept he always followed. An axiom of diplomatists and statesmen goes still farther--that poor dinners are conducive to poor diplomacy, and bad ministerial dinners are equivalent to bad laws and bad negotiations. The first volume of the "Almanach des Gourmands" (1804) is dedicated to M. d'Aigrefeuille, whom the author adjudged most worthy of such pre-eminence--"a connoisseur who is the most erudite arbiter of refined alimentary combinations, and who understands most thoroughly the difficult and little known art of extracting the greatest possible part from an excellent repast." Besides referring to him as setting daily the finest table in Paris, he is extolled as "the guest best adapted to honour an opulent table by his delightful manners, his profound knowledge of the world, and the constantly varied charm of his inexhaustible appetite and conversation." Beauvilliers, once chef of Monsieur, brother of the king, was also the author of a cook-book which achieved marked success,[12] the writer carrying out in cookery the precept that Délille had applied to gardening: "Mais ce grand art exige un artiste qui pense, Prodigue de génie et non pas de dépense." (But this grand art demands an artist of taste-- Prodigal of genius and devoid of all waste.)