Café de la Paix

“ There, behind the tents, fires are lighted, which glow in the darkness. In their flickering light, human figures move to and fro. Approaching, one hears a voice crying, “Coffee, chocolate, all hot, all boiling; two sous the quarter litre at Café Biard!” The establishment has a good name. It is there that the élite in the camp meet, for the drinks are of the finest quality and the installation is luxurious. ”

“ Of more interest to me is the broad Wadi a-‘Arish; midway between Jerusalem and Hebron, a “café” was erected, a place where men and animals can find a place to rest themselves. Don’t picture a European-style café. Instead, imagine a narrow, low-quality, jagged stone building wherein a rather squalid fellow boils dirty water in a filthy pot as he makes a brew which he calls “coffee”—a drink that he sells to European passersby, all at sinfully expensive prices. ”

“ The woman, we learned, used to visit her husband in his dug-out and bring him coffee for breakfast and soup for dinner; this in winter when the slush in the trenches reached the waist and when soldiers were carried out daily suffering from frostbite.
A woman sells café noir near Cuinchy Brewery in a jumble of bricks that was once her home. ”

“ As a Frenchman rarely asks an acquaintance, or even a friend, to his apartment, the café has become the common ground where all meet, for business or pleasure. Not in Paris only, but all over France, in every garrison town, provincial city, or tiny village, the café is the chief attraction, the centre of thought, the focus toward which all the rays of masculine existence converge. ”

“ Heaven take pity on his soul! Many café waiters die without having fulfilled their dream of having an establishment of their own. The life of fatigue which they lead kills them, as a rule, towards their thirtieth year. It is thus that we have seen the greatest of them all vanish from our midst—that waiter of the Café de la Rotonde, whose ‘baoum!’ uttered in a far-resounding voice, has found so many imitators. We see him still, coffee-pot in hand, saying in a voice profound, ‘Pas de Crême?’ Alas, alas, he is dead. ”

“ There is little room for doubt, that the Cafe, one of the characteristic features of French society, is a potent factor in civilizing and refining the human race, in these latter times. Religion and intelligence--moral ideas, moral habits and the collective knowledge of our ancestors--has been transmitted from one generation to another down to our time, by the Church and the Schools, principally. ”

“ The military authorities sent word to the Salvation Army hut one day that fifty Frenchmen would be going through from the trenches at five o’clock in the morning who would have had no opportunity to get anything to eat.
The Salvation Army people went to work and baked up a lot of biscuits and doughnuts and cakes, and got hot coffee ready. The Red Cross canteen was better situated to serve the men and had more conveniences, so they took the things over there, and the Red Cross supplied hot chocolate, and when the men came they were well served. ”

“ A few miles in back of us now, a half dozen Connecticut girls representing the Salvation Army are doing their bit to make things brighter for us, and say, maybe those girls cannot bake. Every day they furnish us with real homemade crullers and pies at a small cost, and their coffee, holy smoke! ”

“ Even in dry weather there was some excitement about the old house. There was the time when some tipsy soldiers, seeing the light in the Senior Chaplain's room late at night, mistook the place for a café and came stumbling in for a drink. ”

“ Many of these people are Christian men and women, and render the Missionary great assistance in expounding the message of mercy and salvation to their customers. Not only cabmen and the outcast get a cup of coffee at these places, but men in the building [240] trade, railway carters, and others, towards six o'clock, gather round them in large numbers, to obtain that which does them good and saves them from going to the early public-house. So that these coffee-stall proprietors are a really useful part of the community. ”

“ I have shared with the boys the doughnuts and chocolate and coffee that seemed to be so much better than any other doughnuts or coffee or chocolate I have ever tasted before. And when it seemed so wonderful to me after just a mild sort of experience down a shell-swept road, through the damp and cold of a French winter day, what must it be to those boys after trench raids or red-hot scraps down rain-soaked trenches under the wet mists of No Man’s Land?... Listen to some of the stories the boys told me: ’You see, Judge, the good old Salvation Army is the real thing. They don’t put on no airs. ”

“ There are unsavoury little cafés, outside which, at all hours of the day, uncouth men, in dirty costumes, sit drinking and smoking narghiles, which the café-clods carry from one to the other with the long tubes between their lips, and then pass it to the lips of their customers, who are vivaciously, and in passionate earnest, discussing the affairs of Europe, while Providence and the womenfolk are equal partners in the care of their own. ”

“ Do not go to-day to see this old incubator, in which so many political and literary celebrities have been hatched; for you will only find a cafe, just like any other, with its groups of ugly little Jews who discuss the coming races, and here and there a poor creature, painted like a Jezebel, dying of chagrin over her pot of beer.
At the decline of the Second Empire—it was May 1, 1866, that Amedee Violette entered there for the first time—the Cafe de, Seville passed for, and with reason too, one of the most remarkable places in Paris. ”

“ It is a picturesque sight—of the Arab with his wild and graceful gestures, and his auditory, hushed into deep and child-like attention, seated at the edge of the rushing tide, while the narrator moves from side to side, and each accent of his distinct and musical voice is heard throughout the Café. The building directly opposite is another house, of a similar kind in every respect There are a few small Cafés, more select as to company, where the Turkish gentlemen often go, form dinner parties, and spend the day. ”

“ Beneath that flag there was joy, peace, comfort, food, clothing, and freedom. Hospital nurses were there with blankets, and great kettles filled with soup and coffee. For the wounded there were bandages; for the sick there were cordials, wines, and medicines. There were tender-hearted men, ready to relieve all their sufferings. It was like passing from the prison of despair into a paradise of peace and rest, and in joy and gladness they began to sing,
"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord." ”

“ As the General stands by the grave that is smothering for him all the song and the sweet sunshine of life, the ever-faithful, never-failing Coffee is by his side. The poor General reaches blindly out and takes hold of the rough, big, loyal hand for support. His beloved Coffee, who flanked the Red Stick Creeks for him at the Horseshoe and held his low mud walls against England's boast and best at New Orleans, will not fail him now in this his sternest trial by the graveside of the blooming Rachel. ”

“ Natural also, and mere common civility, that the Bodyguards, a Regiment of Gentlemen, should invite their Flandre brethren to a Dinner of welcome!—Such invitation, in the last days of September, is given and accepted.
Dinners are defined as 'the ultimate act of communion'; men that can have communion in nothing else, can sympathetically eat together, can still rise into some glow of brotherhood over food and wine. ”

“ Salvation Army officers moved among them, enticing some of them into the shelter of the silent machine-room. "Of what use is tea and coffee to us? Give us our men. No food or drink shall pass our lips until our men have kissed them, or we have kissed their still faces." ”

“ Here a fire of sticks is hastily kindled on a layer of stones, and the coffee, boiled at home, is made hot for us. A wooden table is allowed us from the convent, which we decorate with a white cloth and green leaves. Rolls, butter, hard-boiled eggs, and fruits, together with the coffee, constitute a very presentable breakfast. We have around us the shade of vines and of lemon trees. Our repast is gay. When it is ended, we amuse ourselves with books, work, and conversation of a scope suited to the weather. An Athenian Plato could discourse philosophy in the present state of the thermometer. ”

“ I have found your own services have been very acceptable to the boys, in general, but perhaps your doughnut program, with hot coffee or chocolate, means as much as anything. Not that, like those of old, we follow the Salvation Army because we can get filled up, but we all like their spirit. More than on one occasion do I know of troops moving at night—and pretty wet and hungry—that have been warmed and fed and sent on their way with new courage because of what some Salvation Army worker and hut furnished. ”

“ When the coffee-seller lights his stove in the morning, he makes two cups of coffee of the best and nicely sugared, and pours them out all over the stove, saying, ‘God bless or favour Sheykh Shadhilee and his descendants.’ The blessing on the saint who invented coffee of course I knew, and often utter, but the libation is new to me. You see the ancient religion crops up even through the severe faith of Islam. If I could describe all the details of an Arab, and still more of a Coptic, wedding, you would think I was relating the mysteries of Isis. ”

“ The coffee-kings gather there nightly to keep their wealth in circulation, and to bask in the smiles. They drink somewhat immoderately, as in Mexico, and wait patiently to the closing hour, only to learn that the girls’ own parents call to take them straight home. But the coffee-kings are ever hopeful. They come back night after night. And the cafés possess a gayety that adds to the city’s attractiveness.
Neither revolution, nor earthquake, nor disappointment in love can dampen the good humor of these countries. ”

“ Not at the grave; but as soon as the men have done embracing one another, one of another family, not belonging to the dead, invites the people to his house, and a supper is given, meat and rice or bread in the meat-broth. Coffee follows, and, in fact, the party differs in nothing from any other. Conversation on every topic is carried on, and it is meant to put the relatives to other thoughts. ”

“ Where Friendship, Communion, has become an incredible tradition; and your holiest Sacramental Supper is a smoking Tavern Dinner, with Cook for Evangelist? Where your Priest has no tongue but for plate-licking; and your high Guides and Governors cannot guide; but on all hands hear it passionately proclaimed: Laissez faire; leave us alone of your guidance, such light is darker than darkness; eat your wages and sleep. Thus, too, must an observant eye discern everywhere that saddest spectacle: the Poor perishing, like neglected, foundered Draught-Cattle, of Hunger and Overwork ”

“ In their huts the men could always find warmth and light and good cheer, music and games and good things to eat that were touchingly reminiscent of boyhood and home. Shells screamed overhead, gas floated back from the front and the earth shook with the roar of battle, but the Salvation Army workers stood to their self-imposed duties regardless of their own comfort or danger and had ready for the long lines of soldiers coming and going a smiling, heartfelt welcome and huge quantities of pies and doughnuts and hot drinks. ”

“ AT THE DESERTO
The lunch was delicate, exquisite; everything save the coffee (which the monks wished to provide: coffee, black-bread, and grapes which were half raisins was the monks' idea of a lunch) had been sent up from Sorrento. ”

“ The drivelling of the Symbolists was not entirely lost in the atmosphere of their café, like the smoke of their pipes and cigarettes. A certain amount of it was perpetuated, and appeared in the Revue Indépendante, the Revue Contemporaine, and other fugitive periodicals, which served as organs to the round table of the François I. These little journals and the books published by the Symbolists were not at first noticed outside the café. ”

“ On one of my light days the guard forgot to bring my soup. He brought the coffee in the morning, and went out again at once. I thought he had gone for the bread, but when he did not come, I drank the coffee—which was hot and comforting. He did not come near me all day. It may have been the expectation of food, together with the hot coffee, which stimulated my stomach, for that day I experienced what starving men dread most of all—the hunger-pain. It is like a famished rat that gnaws and tears. ”

“ In consequence, the Café Lander flourished exceedingly, and its circle of [Pg 56] clients daily increased, until it was known, far and wide, as the resort of embryo genius. For all the boisterous and good-tempered young fellows who crowded round its tables, and emptied bocks and consumed coffee (fifty centimes a cup with fine champagne) , were coming great men. They were the future lights in literature, art, philosophy, and politics. The real living great man they professed to regard with respectful admiration, but they wanted none of him in their midst. ”

“ Still, certain cafés are able to boast a clientèle, with the military, journalistic, artistic or commercial element in preponderating force—cafés where the stockbrokers, students or officers go—but the old historic café, the café of tradition, where you were sure to find some celebrity on exhibition—a first-class poet or a philosopher—may be said to be defunct. ”