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CHAPTER VI
THE FINE ART OF DINING

Paris is full of restaurants, but the list of those at which one may enjoy both a supremely chic fashion exhibit and a dinner worthy to be associated with the clothes are comparatively few. Indeed, where the frocks are up to an epicurean standard the food is sometimes far below, and there are cafés in Paris where a gourmet will find possibilities of ecstatic moments, but where no swish of petticoats will break in upon his rapt silences.

Not that the average viveur of Paris objects to association of pâté and petticoat. Far from it. He will follow the petticoat even to the Ritz where the pâté is fairly sure to be poor, – but he will occupy his leisure intervals by enjoying a meal at the Café Voisin, or testing the famous cellars at the Café Anglais.

As for Madame, – she is a bit of a gourmande, of course. One does not live in Paris for years without learning the proper attitude toward a dinner, and the Parisienne thinks more about her food than is consistent with traditions of the fragile and ethereal feminine. When a poetic vision in vaporous mousseline and lace knits her beautiful brows and pouts her curving lips and waxes vastly indignant because an entrée has not the right flavour or because a wine is not of the vintage indicated by the label on the bottle, there is an uneasy stirring in the mental pigeonhole where the observer keeps his illusions; but, after all, the Parisienne, though knowing in matters gastronomic, does not allow that knowledge to destroy her sense of proportion. She may like a good sauce and a good wine, but she insists first of all that a dinner shall be well seasoned with gaiety. She wants to dine where she may wear her smartest frock and see the smartest frock of her dearest foe, where she may see and be seen. She is coquette before she is gourmande, and the restaurants where she can combine both rôles are those to which she accords most enthusiastic favour.

Go out to the Bois on a fine night in June, if pâtés and petticoats divide your allegiance, and eat your dinner in the courtyard of the Château de Madrid or on the terrace at Armenonville. If you are a stranger in Paris the latter will probably be your choice. The fame of Armenonville has travelled far, and it stands for all that Paris means to the visitor who has gained his knowledge of the sorceress city from reading and hearsay. It is in the Bois, this famous restaurant where all the mad, merry world of Europe has dined at one time or another, and, though rivals have come and gone, though restaurants more elaborate and cuisines more perfect have wooed the luxury-loving crowd, Armenonville has held its own, has kept its place as the most brilliantly popular café of Paris – and the most cosmopolitan.

Frankly speaking, the café retains its vogue by favour of the demi-mondaine of Paris. Long ago she chose Armenonville for her own, and she has remained loyal to her choice. This is not saying that for the beau-monde the restaurant is taboo. Everybody goes to Armenonville, but there, as to no other café, flock the high-class demi-mondaines with their elaborate toilettes, their superb jewels, their consummately sensuous allure; and, as always, in their wake comes a reckless, prodigal crowd. Terrace, verandahs, and inner rooms are thronged night after night, and the throng is the incarnation of the spirit that has made Paris the hub of the frivolous world, has drawn from all countries folk devoted to the worship of the vanities, has stamped the money-spending set of Paris as the most consistently volatile, the most systematically extravagant class of Vanity Fair.

The leisure class of France is unreservedly a leisure class. The Frenchman of wealth, rank, and leisure is likely to give himself up to what someone has called "the science of not making a living." He does not have the vast business interests that usually claim the wealthy American, he does not go in for public life as does the average Englishman of a corresponding class; and, though exceptions to this rule are many, the chances are that he concentrates his energies upon amusing himself and assiduously cultivates every taste that will open an avenue to pleasurable sensation.

He is, for instance, connoisseur of food and wine, but he is epicure not glutton. Your true gourmet has with much effort and at considerable cost trained his palate to an appreciation of subtle distinctions, of vague, elusive flavours. Eating and drinking are serious matters with him. He eats not to kill his appetite but to tickle his senses, and he values his capacity for epicurean joys too highly to endanger it by riotous indulgence. The Parisian viveur devotes to his meals an extravagant amount of consideration. They are to him sacred rites, mystic, unfathomable to the uninitiated. The dishes are planned and arranged with reference to their relation to one another, are harmonized, blended, resolved into wonderful, sense-satisfying gastronomic chords. A succession of flavours leads subtly and cumulatively to a gastronomic climax, drinks are not absorbed with blithe impartiality, but run a faultless scale of stimulation and form a fitting accompaniment to the progressive harmony of the food.

It is with other pleasures as with eating and drinking. The Parisian takes his gaiety with profound seriousness, and the foreigner, as well as the Parisian, if he stays long in Paris, adapts himself to the epicurean point of view.

Out at Armenonville, one comes into an understanding of that modern paganism which lies at the heart of Vanity Fair, though the scene does not represent the most subtly æsthetic expression of the cult, for the place is overcrowded, and there is a hurrying and bustling of waiters, the laughter is a trifle too loud, the perfumes are a trifle too heavy, the jewels a trifle too resplendent. There is a burning fever in the pulse of Armenonville, a strain of coarseness in the gaiety. The Vanity worshippers go about their devotions with finer art over among the great trees of the courtyard of Madrid.

But Armenonville is – Armenonville. One must take it as one finds it, and one is likely to find it amusing.

The flowers and napery and service of the little tables on the terrace – more popular on a summer night than the tables within doors – glow with a roseate bloom under the shaded lights. Vivid ruby and topaz gleam in the wine-glasses, the air is throbbing with the wild, passionate music of the Tziganes. Men of all types and from all quarters of the globe lean to look into the eyes of women marvellously gowned, magnificently jewelled, flushed under the influence of music and wine and admiration and conscious power. Laughter, wit, the tinkle of glasses, the hum of voices talking gossip in all the languages of Europe, delicately cooked dishes, rare wines, colour, perfume, melody, – everywhere an appeal to the senses, an effort to meet the demands of a class with tastes trained to appreciate the fine flower of all things material, and with money to pay for the gratification of its desires! Nothing in old Rome was in spirit more essentially pagan and prodigal than this, but latter-day civilization has brought its refinements. The Roman orgy has been translated into polite French.

If one sits long enough at one of the terrace tables, familiar faces are likely to float within one's range of vision, for all the world pays tribute to Armenonville, and public characters are many in the crowd. Opera singers, theatrical folk, famous writers and painters, professional beauties, diplomats, – all the celebrities whose pictures are most often in the papers are among the diners. Over there at the end table, Tod Sloan is sitting opposite a radiant being in cerise and silver. At the next table the Prime Minister of England is dining with an American Duchess and her English Duke. Beyond her Grace, little Polaire of "Claudine" fame is keeping a tableful of men in a gale of laughter. An American millionaire is host to a group of theatrical folk of whom Maxine Elliott is bright particular star, and close at hand the Newstraten, who owes her notoriety to the favour of another millionaire, is vis-à-vis to a well-known Russian nobleman. Réjane, the ever-youthful, is exchanging good French for bad with an English theatrical manager. Leopold, King of the Belgians, boulevardier, dear friend of Parisian cocottes, is in evidence. A Turkish pasha with several members of his suite is back to back with the greatest brewer of England. London's latest Maharajah is having a royal occidental time in company with several pretty and titled English women. Mrs. Clarence Mackay and several other members of the New York smart set are among the elaborately gowned diners – but Madame Stanley and Margyl and the beautiful Cavalieri are gowned as well and more bejewelled. The crowd is never the same, yet always the same, and all through the year the show goes on, though cold weather drives the diners from the terrace to over-heated and over-lighted rooms.

Over at the Madrid, too, there is picturesque dining – but with a difference. The old château lies on the edge of the Bois, an unimposing building promising little, and, so far as the building itself is concerned, fulfilling its promises. One does not go to the Madrid in winter. The rooms are small and stuffy, and poorly adapted to restaurant purposes, but during the season of al fresco dining, the Madrid is all that there is of the most modish, a gathering place for the most exclusive society folk of Paris. One drives boldly up to the château and into an archway that leads through the building and brings one out upon the edge of a big courtyard picturesquely set with fine old forest trees under which men and women are dining at little tables. Beyond the court are the stables and, though a high, thick hedge intervenes, a muffled stamping of hoofs, the jingle of silver chains, sometimes furnishes a subdued accompaniment to the music of the Tziganes, an element hardly discordant and suggesting vaguely ideas of mettled horses, of luxurious carriages, of all that goes to the self-indulgence of such diners as those beneath the trees.

Things are more tranquil here than at Armenonville – gay, sense-satisfying, artificial, wordly, but of a finer flavour. Here one finds the most aristocratic of Parisian mondaines, the clique of the Polo Club and la Boulié and Puteaux. Many nationalities are represented among the diners, but the French are in the majority and the Parisienne of the best type may be found under the great trees of Madrid. She may be no more perfectly dressed, this mondaine, than her demi-mondaine sister of Armenonville. Their frocks and hats come from the same makers, their jewels were bought at the same shop on the Rue de la Paix, the grande dame of Madrid has perhaps not so liberal a share of good looks as the lionne of Armenonville, and may be made up quite as conscientiously – for artificiality is beloved of the Parisienne, is a part of her creed – but my lady of Madrid has the something which sets her apart, the impress of race, of blood, of class. Even the veriest stranger within Parisian gates who might wander from one café to the other would realize at first impression that the two were separated by more than the green stretches of the Bois. As to which café he would prefer, that depends upon his tastes – and to some extent upon his mood. One who does not "belong" at Madrid may feel himself a lonely outsider. No one is on the outside at Armenonville save the bankrupt.

There are other cafés in the Bois whose fortunes have risen and fallen, but none rank with Armenonville and Madrid, though quite recently the Café de Lac has taken a fresh lease of life and begun to find favour with the smart Parisian crowd.

Report has it, however, that there is to be a new restaurant in the Bois, one that will totally eclipse the two reigning cafés, and will set a new standard for the world. A syndicate with unlimited capital has the project in hand, and it is said that the new pleasure palace will rise on the site of the old Pre Catalan, – Arcadian little farm where a herd of mild-eyed cows furnishes fresh milk for children, and a little café supplies drinks of less Arcadian simplicity to anyone who asks for them. For years the popular duelling ground of Paris was just behind the buildings of the Pre Catalan. There is a little ruined theatre, too, behind the restaurant, and all the smart world of Paris has upon occasion gone out there to see the actors of the Théâtre Français and the Odeon give classical plays upon the sylvan stage. Such piquant incongruities are dear to the French heart.

But it is in the middle of the afternoon that the Pre Catalan is charming. Carriages full of children, with their quaintly costumed bonnes or their fashionably dressed mammas, roll up, one after another, and deposit their loads, until the place is all abloom with babies and musical with pattering feet and babbling tongues. They have come to drink the fresh milk, these pretty, overdressed children. Even the babies lead a life chic, in Paris.

And when the babies are all snugly asleep in their beds, the Pre Catalan often has other visitors. Late diners who have made a night of it in town cafés, and then driven about the Bois singing romantic ballads and growing more maudlin moment by moment, drive up to the Pre Catalan in the grey dawn, and weep upon the shoulder of the waiter who brings them their glasses of fresh milk. It is milk they want. They are in a state of exuberant sentimentality – of dramatic remorse. They have renounced Bacchus and all his crew. They are beginning new lives. The world is a weariness and a delusion, full of headaches and profound melancholy – Fifi goes back to nature at the Pre Catalan in such a mood, – but midnight finds her at the Café de Paris once more.

It is in this place of duels and babies and tipsy penitents that the new restaurant is to shine resplendent, if plans do not miscarry. Whether with all its grandeurs it will attract the crowd remains to be seen. A restaurant's success is not always in proportion to the money spent in equipping it. There, for example, was the Café des Fleurs. It was the prettiest café in Paris. The men behind it were so wealthy that they did not care whether the place paid or not. They lavished money upon the decorations, the cuisine, the cellars. They hired the best Tzigane orchestra in Paris – and the fashionable crowd stayed away. Why? No one knows why. "The women would not come," says the promoter, with a shrug. "There is no accounting for the whims of the women. There was everything to attract them and they would not come, – c'était finis."

Cafés by the score have had this same history, or have had a brief brilliant success and a failure sudden and complete. There was Cubats on the Champs Elysées, superbly installed in a house where had lived the mistress of Louis Napoleon. For a little while everyone went to Cubats. The place had enormous success, and then, all of a sudden, the crowd stopped going. Cubats did not exist. Perhaps the diners grew tired of being robbed. Parisians of the high-living class do not object to spending money. It is their metier, but the prices at Cubats were monumental and the proprietor in other and less humdrum times would have been a bold buccaneer or a bandit chief. One night a diner ordered a melon with his dinner. The waiter reported that melons were out of season. The patron growled, the waiter murmured that he would call Monsieur. Monsieur came, bland, imperturbable, and listened to the growling.

M'sieu wished absolutely to have a melon? But certainly. One could get it. It would be for after the dinner instead of before the dinner, however. That would be satisfactory?

The diner, mollified, signified his willingness to eat his melon after his sweet, and when the appointed time arrived, the melon arrived with it. Later, the bill arrived in its turn. One item read: "Melon – 250 francs." There was a storm and the matter went to the courts, but the restaurateur remained imperturbable. The melon was expensive – he admitted as much to the judge sorrowfully – but M'sieu would have it. When one orders horses and carriage and sends a special messenger post-haste through the night for many miles in order to gratify a patron's whim, one must be paid for one's trouble. The judge appreciated the point and the bill was paid, – but in time Cubats closed its doors.

Outside of Paris there are many restaurants to which Parisians drive or motor for dinner when they are tired of the Bois, yet want to escape from city walls. The Reservoir at Versailles, and the Henri Quatre at St. Germain, are the oldest, the most famous of the list, and though for a time their prestige declined in so far as the truly fashionable diners were concerned, both have taken on new popularity since the automobile brought about a mania for dining out of town. At the Reservoir one is in the midst of historic associations. The place, with its decorations and furnishings in pure Louis XVI style, was already famous when Marie Antoinette played at farming in the Petit Trianon, near by. The place has seen many notable dinners, harboured many illustrious personages, and its ancient grandeur clings about it like a garment, though it caters now to the most mixed and modern of fashionable crowds.

Historic memories swarm thickly about the Henri Quatre too. Louis the XIV was born in the building which is now a restaurant, and a cradle marks the café silver. From the terrace and the windows one looks over miles of fertile valley, and at the tables one finds, save upon Sunday, a particularly chic crowd. On Sunday the bourgeoisie invade the place, but during the week it is very much the thing to run out to the Henri Quatre for luncheon or dinner.

It is a pity le Roi galant cannot come back to his own for at least one summer night. He had ever an eye for a pretty woman, and it would warm even his ghost to watch the women who flutter from automobile or carriage to the pavilion that bears his name. He would smile approval too at the woman of the golf or tennis costume, for this hot-headed Henry was catholic in his tastes. Perhaps it is the tolerance of his spirit that has made possible at the Henri Quatre what would be shocking at the Bellevue, where the Pompadour is presiding genius. La Grande Marquise was not a marvel of morality, but upon etiquette she stood firm. One must be in grande toilette for Bellevue, but for the Henri Quatre – that is as one chooses.

Pretty women in ravishing toilettes flock to the tables of the glass-enclosed verandahs; but, side by side with the woman of the trailing chiffon and lace, of the wonderful driving cloak, of the picture hat, is the woman who has been playing golf or tennis at some one of the clubs round about St. Germain. The chances are that, being French, she has not played violently enough to disarrange her costume. It is as immaculate, as perfect in its way as the dinner toilette of the woman who has driven out from town, but she adores le sport, and she chatters about it enthusiastically over her truffles and champagne, looking, the while, like a Dresden china image of a golf girl.

High above the bank of the Seine at Meudon stands the Bellevue, a restaurant de luxe, which was built only a few years ago, and has had a considerable vogue, but has suffered since the day of the automobile arrived, because it is hardly far enough from Paris to afford a good motor spin, though too far to be as convenient as the restaurants of the Bois.

The Pompadour once had a villa where the picturesque white building now stands far above the river and overlooking all the country round, and in point of elegance the modern belles who dine on the terrace or in the white arched dining-rooms live up to the traditions of the place where the Grande Marquise held butterfly court; for one dons one's smartest frock for Bellevue. From the river a funicular leads up to the broad terraces in front of the Pavilion. Behind the restaurant the wooded hill climbs on up toward the sky, and on its top Flammarion's observatory is perched. There is a little hotel in the woods, an unimportant place, where Bellevue parties may stay over night if they do not care to go back to the city after a late dinner or supper, – and it is not always easy to get back to town if one has come out to Bellevue in plebeian fashion by train or boat, and lingered late in defiance of boat and railway time-tables. A party of Americans were stranded that way one night last summer. No train, no boat, – and no knowledge of the little hotel in the woods. No carriage to be had, unless les messieurs could wait indefinitely. Les messieurs, being New Yorkers, were not fond of waiting. They tucked the mesdames under their arms, and went out to reconnoitre. In the court stood a magnificent big touring-car, in charge of a liveried and stately chauffeur. One of the Americans boldly approached the imposing personage.

"My man," he said in French that was intelligible if scarcely academic, "I want you to take us into town."

The Frenchman stared in amazement.

"But, Monsieur, this is a private automobile. M. le baron is having supper in there with – eh bien, with a lady."

"Exactly," said the man from New York. "But you are going to take us to town. The baron will never know you're gone. I saw the lady."

The chauffeur lapsed into what Mark Twain would call "a profound French calm." He wrung his hands and rolled his eyes and shrugged his shoulders and called the gods to witness that the baron would eat him alive if he dared to consider such a proposition.

The man from New York listened with interest; and, when the conversationalist paused for breath, ran his hand into his pocket and brought forth something that clinked musically.

"It's worth one hundred francs to me to go to town in the baron's car," he said.

The chauffeur looked at the open hand, at the car, at the restaurant door. His conscience struggled within him and was silenced.

"Voyons, M'sieu, we will consider." He tiptoed to a window, looked into the dining-room, and returned with the air of a comic opera conspirator.

"C'est bien, M'sieu. They arrive at the salad. There is always the dessert, the coffee, the cigar, the liqueur. One can do it, but it is to be hoped that M'sieu and his friends do not object to speed."

That was a wild ride to Paris, – up hill and down, at top speed, with never a slackening for corners or for foot passengers. The Americans were dropped where they could take cabs and the hundred francs changed hands.

"Much obliged. Good luck to you," said the man from New York.

The chauffeur consulted his watch. "Provided always that they have not quarrelled," he murmured anxiously – and the machine shot away into the night.

Down in the heart of Paris, the Café de Paris, the Café Paillard, and the Ritz are the restaurants in which one may best study purple and fine linen. There are other cafés famed for cuisine and cellars, but my Lady of the Chiffons finds them dull, and in the creed of a Parisienne dulness heads the list of mortal sins.

Americans and English are the mainstay of the Ritz, save during the tea hour, when the crowd becomes cosmopolitan. At the Café Paillard one finds the diners of the Madrid a clique aristocratic, mondain, and chiefly French. The Café de Paris repeats the story of Armenonville, though without the picturesque woodland setting and the attractive al fresco features. The two cafés have the same clientèle, the same atmosphere, – even the same proprietor. He is a subject for congratulation, this proprietor. The famous old Café Foyot, under the shadow of the Luxembourg, is his too, and the Café de Paris of Trouville, and the Helder at Nice, – all, save the Foyot, tremendously popular with the crowd vowed to extravagance and folly, and, as a result of that popularity, all phenomenally successful from a financial point of view. The Foyot also has a success, but of a different kind.

Naturally, the man who manages these restaurants is rich. His private establishments are handsome, he spends money lavishly, but – and here is the secret of his success – he is first of all a restaurateur, eternally vigilant, neglecting no detail, proud of his metier, glorying in his triumphs. He could buy, twice over, many of his patrons, yet one will see him moving about among his hurrying waiters, suggesting, prompting, reprimanding, seeing all things, adjusting all difficulties, pouring oil on all troubled waters.

He stops for a moment beside an old patron.

"Ah, Comte X – , bon soir."

His eyes rest upon the fish that has been placed before the count, and his face clouds. A motion of his hand brings an alarmed waiter.

"You serve the sole so, to Monsieur le Comte? You think perhaps that the sole au vin blanc should have that air? Take it away."

"Pardon, M'sieu. You understand, – a moment more or less and a sauce is spoiled. I am grieved that you should wait, but one dines well or one has not dined at all. In a moment you shall have a fish that will be as it should be. You have always the same burgundy, yes? I, too, am of your opinion. It is the best in our cellars."

He hurries away, soft-stepping, alert, diplomatic, napkin over arm, bowing deferentially here and there. A millionaire they say – but certainly a restaurant-keeper who knows his business, such a one as France can produce and Paris can appreciate.

There is another restaurateur in Paris whose name should not be left out of any discussion of Parisian dining. A few years ago he would have had no right to a place in this frivolous chapter, for though his restaurant was famous it was not smart. The gourmet might dine there – or rather lunch there – but the woman of fashion never found her way down to the little old building whose battered sign of a silver tower proclaimed that here was the Tour d'Argent, the café over which presided the inimitable Frederic, Roi des Canards, last of the old school of French cooks and hosts.

Even now the modish Parisienne does not go to the Tour d'Argent, but Americans have taken up the old café, and pretty women and elegant frocks are now no strangers in the Tour d'Argent, though one could not call the place fashionable.

The wine merchants of the Halles des Vins could swear that, fine frocks or no fine frocks, Frederic deserves a place in any chapter devoted to the fine art of dining; for Frederic belongs to a school of cooking which made the cuisine a fine art, and if the rooms of the little tavern down behind the morgue offer no appeal to the senses in the form of music and flowers and jewels and chiffons, they offer eating and drinking good enough to offset many omissions.

The Tour d'Argent has been a restaurant for three hundred years, and looking out from its windows over the cité patrons have been able to see most of the great events of Paris taking place, but M. Frederic is considerably less old than his café.

The Halles des Vins stand only a little way below the restaurant, and the wine merchants learned to go to Frederic's for luncheon. They were a high-living, exacting group of gourmets, patrons to appreciate good cooking and put a cook upon his mettle. Incidentally they knew a thing or two about wines, and through their friendly advice and favour the cellars of Frederic became, in the opinion of many connoisseurs, the best in Paris.

Others beside the wine-merchants found their way to the sign of the silver tower. The fame of Frederic spread through Paris and beyond. Last year in Nice, a New York man asked the chef of a noted hotel to prepare for him a "canneton à la presse." "Cook it for me just as Frederic does it," said the American. The chef shrugged his shoulders, smiled, and shook his head.

"I shall be charmed to cook the duck for Monsieur, but to cook it as le Roi des Canards cooks it? – Non, I have not the skill."

Tribute from a rival is tribute indeed. Frederic is King of the Ducks, and he sits alone upon his throne.

You will probably find the king in the little ante-room to his restaurant if you go down to the Tour d'Argent early enough to have a talk with its autocrat. There in the little ante-room are displayed game, meats, delicacies, dozens of things a patron might like to order for his meal, and there stands Frederic, a typical French host, with his long grey frock-coat clinging lovingly to his portly body, his side whiskers framing his ruddy, beaming face, his napkin or towel over his arm.

If he has seen you before he will know you. If he has seen you twice, you and he are old friends.

His face takes on more luminous cheer as he catches sight of you, and he bows profoundly, with a dramatic flourish of the napkin.

"Ah, bon soir, M'sieu. Tout va toujours bien? – et Madame? – et le petit?"

He leads you into the restaurant and finds a table for you. The important matter of the dinner is settled, and then, if you are of the favoured, Frederic will talk to you of his art, and you will hear of refinements and subtleties of cookery which will make you smile until Frederic has proved to you that they are not poetic fancy but substantial fact. Your quail, for example, must be cooked before a grape-vine fire. Nothing but grape-vine will do the trick. Frederic is very positive on that point, and if you are skeptic, he may perhaps take you out and show you the grape-vine fire. Afterward you eat the quail and skepticism melts away into unquestioning faith.

That is only one of the mysteries of Frederic's cuisine. The man loves his art, goes to all lengths to achieve the results he desires, would rather invent a successful sauce than inherit a million, is as proud of his canneton à la presse as is a painter or poet of his masterpiece. On the whole, a majority of the public would probably prefer the masterpiece of Frederic to that of the poet or the painter, and in the chef's own mind there would be no doubt as to the comparative excellence of poem, picture, and duck.