Of course, the whole centre of this passionate fury was Camille Fontrailles. She would not see him; very well, he would see what he would not do. As he walked along the Rue St. Honoré, he glanced from right to left, after the manner of a man who seeks to pick a quarrel even if he has to pick it with a stranger. But at that comparatively early hour, the Rue St. Honoré was not the place for a bully’s business. People were too busy to give cause for offence, and too lowly to take it with a nobleman, and Rochefort, if the matter had been an absolute necessity with him, would have been condemned to skewer a shopboy, a market porter, or a water-carrier. But at the Café de Régence, when he reached it, he found what he imagined to be the _hors-d’œuvre_ for a regular banquet. The Café de Régence, at that period, was the meeting-place of the intellectuals, and at the same time the meeting-place of the bloods. Rousseau might have been seen there of an evening, Jean Dubarry took breakfast there sometimes, Rochefort, and many others like him, frequented the place. At this hour, that is to say about ten o’clock, Rochefort found a couple of bald-headed men and several rather seedy ones sipping coffee and discussing the news of the day. They were Philosophers—Intellectuals, and like all Philosophers and Intellectuals of all ages, untidy, shabby, and making a great noise. Rochefort, drinking the wine he had ordered and talking to the waiter who had served it, spoke in so loud a voice and made such free remarks about things in general, and the habitués of the café in particular, that faces were turned to him from the surrounding tables and then turned away again. No one wished to pick a quarrel with M. de Rochefort, his character was too well known, and his tongue. He ordered _déjeuner_ for half-past eleven, and then he sat drinking his wine, his virulence, like a sheathed sword, only waiting to be drawn. But no one came to draw it. People entered and spoke to him, but they were all Amiables. There was M. de Duras, rubicund and portly, with whom one could no more quarrel than with a cask of port; there was M. de Jussieu, the botanist and friend of Rousseau, beautifully dressed and carrying a book, his head full of flowers and roots, long Latin terms and platitudes; there was M. de Champfleuri, eighty years old, yet with all his teeth, dressed like a May morning, and fragile-looking as a Dresden china figure. He would damn your soul for the least trifle, but you could not quarrel with him for fear of breaking him. There was Monsieur Müller, who was finding his way in Paris as an exponent—by means of a translator—of the theories of Mesmer. You could not quarrel with him, as he only knew three words of French. There were others equally impossible. Ah! if only M. d’Estouteville had turned up, or Monpavon; Camus or Coigny!