56 COFFEE. 



poured ; by napkins with gold fringes, on which it was served to 

 the ladies. Add to this the furniture, the dresses, and the foreign 

 customs, the strangeness of addressing the host through the inter- 

 preter, being seated on the ground, on tiles, etc., and you will ^ 

 allow that there was more than enough to turn the heads of his 

 visitors. Leaving the hotel of the ambassador with an enthusiasm 

 easily imagined, they hastened to their acquaintances, to speak of 

 the coffee of which they had partaken ; and Heaven only knows 

 to what a degree they were excited." 



Marseilles lays claim to the first coffee-house in France, 16T1. 

 In the following year, an Armenian, named Pascal, opened a 

 shop at the Fair of Saint-Germain, near Paris, in which he dis- 

 pensed the exotic beverage to the sightseers. This success en- 

 couraged him to establish a coffee-house in the capital, on the 

 Quai de I'Ecole. It was smaU in proportions and modest in ap- 

 pointments, chiefly frequented by travellers, knights of Malta, 

 and officers of the army and navy ; but it soon achieved with 

 these considerable reputation, sold its coffee very high, and 

 proved a most profitable venture. Pascal is said to have subse- 

 quently gone to London, to engage there in the coffee trade. Is it 

 not barely possible that this person is identical with the Greek, 

 Eossie, previously mentioned? At last, an enterprising spirit, 

 Etienne d'Alep, built what was for the time a magnificent hall, 

 with mirrors, divans, marble tables, etc., in the Oriental taste. 

 He soon had several competitors. The celebrated Procope, after 

 having long sold coffee at the Fair of Saint-Germain, founded 

 in 1689, in the rue des Fosses Saint-Germain, in Paris, near the 

 theatre of the ComSdie Fran9aise, the establishment which has 

 since been immortalized by its association with the names of Boi- 

 leau, Lafontaine, Moliere, and later, Yoltaire, the Encyclopedists, 

 etc. Later on, under Louis XV., the famous Cafe de la Kegence 

 was established, which became the Mecca of chess-players. The 

 caf6 had definitively struck root in Paris, and no breeze of politi- 

 cal change or popular fickleness was ever to destroy it. 



In London the growth of coffee in popular favor had been still 

 more rapid. " Three years after the first introduction of coffee 

 upon the statute books," says Mr. Simmonds, "the increase of 

 houses for its sale had become so great that by the Act passed 



