18 THE HISTORY OF COFFEE. 



who became noted as an arbiter of taste in such matters, opened 

 a splendid saloon, at which the rank and fashion of the French 

 capital used to assemble. 



Soon the cafe became the resort of the most renowned wits, 

 artists, and philosophers of the French metropolis Rousseau, 

 Voltaire, Piron, with Marmontel and many others. The univer 

 sal favor in which coffee is still held in Paris, sufficiently dis 

 proves the accuracy of the famous prophecy of Madame de 

 Sevigne, that &quot;coffee and Racine would have their day.&quot; 

 Among the most noted of the Parisian cafes were those known 

 as the Cafe des Mille Colonnes, and the Cafe Turc, on the 

 Boulevard, which w r ere fitted up with oriental splendor, as glit 

 tering with ornament as an opium-eater s dreams, or the glow 

 ing tints of a page of VatheJc. 



The high favor with which coffee came at length to be re 

 garded in the houses of the great, may be inferred from the 

 fact that a sum equivalent to $15,000 a year was expended for 

 supplying the daughters of Louis XY. of France with the bev 

 erage. In 1714 the magistrates of Amsterdam presented Louis 

 XIY. with a coffee-tree, which was sent to the Royal Gardens. 

 It was Louis XIY. who directed M. Des Clieux to take one of the 

 plants to Martinique, one of the French West India possessions. 

 The voyage proved so tempestuous and prolonged that he was 

 compelled to divide his water-rations with it, in order to keep it 

 alive. From that parent plant an immense progeny has sprung. 



The consumption of coffee in the French capital at the 

 breaking out of the Revolution was something enormous. We 

 find it estimated that the French West India Islands furnished 

 no less than eighty millions of pounds of it yearly, and this was 

 irrespective of a liberal supply from the East. The two 

 sources combined were not even adequate to the supply of the 

 demand. We are not surely to infer from this circumstance 

 that coffee itself possesses any Revolutionary element. 



