I wandered (says Bilboquet) in solitude under the arcades of the Palais Boyal, little burdened with money, but heavily laden with thoughts and reflections.
I have always been by nature an observer; there is in me a little of La Bruyère mixed up with a good deal of La Rochefoucauld, and I do not know how much of Vauvenargues, epicurean and slow, as my friend M. Sainte Beuve would say.
The place lent itself pretty well to observation. The Restoration, so severe at the opera, had not thought of shortening the petticoats of the Palais Royal.
The great wooden gallery walked about with naked shoulders, displaying its legs to the passer-by, and twisting its hips in the strangest fashion.
The other galleries smoked, sang, drank from morning to evening. The traditions of the Empire were not entirely extinct by the time that the Restoration had already run half its course.
There were still some ribotieurs, of whom our viveurs have only been pale copies.
Suppers were rare, but breakfasts abounded. Suppers do not date further back than the revolution of July, which restored so many customs of the old régime: jars and vases of old china, lacquer-work from Japan, madrigals called sonnets, masked balls and suppers.
In 1823, a breakfast was laid that the Duke of Angoulême would not enter ^Bto Spain, and bets were made to devour twelve little pies and swallow twelve tumblers of Bordeaux whilst twelve was striking by the timepiece of the Café de Foy.
The mirliflores breakfasted with their mistresses in private cabinets. Breakfasts were the great seductive means of the epoch.
How often has it happened to me to perambulate at four o'clock in the evening in the gallery in which are the establishments of Véfour, Véry, and the Frères Provençaux, to observe the breakfasters as they came forth, and to guess by their physiognomical aspects what wine they had been imbibing. The man who has drunk Bordeaux has no point of resemblance with he who has indulged in Burgundy or quaffed tumblers of Champagne.
All three walk, look, and express themselves in a different manner.
The one whistles as he walks, the other hums, the third sings.
Bordeaux relaxes the mind, Burgundy enlivens, Champagne fills one with transports.
No one before me has made these observations. I sketch them off for the first time in these Mémoires, leaving to myself to treat of them more fully in a work of haute physiologie culinaire, which will be the labour of my old age.
One of my favourite relaxations was to dive into the subterranean Café des Aveugles. I used to ask for a glass of punch; grog only came with the democracy. My elbows on the table, I passed many hours listening to the great drum, the clarionet, and the cymbals of the establishment, whose harmonious sounds reminded me of my youth and my first loves.
Sometimes I might be seen in the smoky saloons of No. 113, throwing to the croupier's rake a hopeful two-franc piece. The night previous Atala had appeared to me in a gauze robe, a crown of laurel on her forehead, a pair of red buskins on her feet, the complete costume of a muse.
That was a dream, I said to myself as I continued my walk, which may bring me good luck; the ancients took care not to despise dreams; let us imitate the ancients, and since Atala's buskins were red, let us go and risk one forty-sous piece on that colour.
It would be difficult to say if the experiences actually collected by the great representative of the bourgeois class of Paris in the cafés and restaurants in that city of strange silhouettes, really do present anything much more than the sarcastic writer of the Memoires de Bilboguet has imagined for him.
