to excite the admiration of those London
dealers who sell you a naked sherry or a dry
port at twenty-six shillings per dozen. To
tickle his customers' hot palates, he gave
them, instead of the Burgundy of the Côte
d'Or, that harsh, bastard Burgundy which
is grown at Auxerre, made harsher by the
infusion of alum, and further disguised by
being mixed with the wine of Orleans. But
Rousseau was not the only celebrated
frelateur, or brouilleur de vin (as those who
adulterated liquors were called). Forel, whose
cabaret was close to the Palais Royal, and
Lamy, who kept the sign of the Trois Cuillers
(Three Spoons), contested the palm with
him. All three were gibbeted in an epigram
written upon them by Boursaut, who
frequented their respective houses: the gist of
which was, that although they were allowed
to rob their guests with impunity, they were
not yet permitted to poison them.

The picture that might be drawn of the
drunkenness of the nobles during the period
of the Regency, would be bad enough, but
its worst features could be rendered still
more repulsive by showing that many of the
ladies imitated their lords in their devotion
to the bottle. Madame de Villedieu, the
authoress of a number of romances, now
forgotten, died from the results of a drinking
bout; and the last moments of the Princess
de Condé, the widow of the Duke de
Vendôme, were passed in her private cabinet,
where, surrounded by well-filled flasks, she
was in the habit of indulging in solitary
intoxication. This princess was only forty
years old when she died, in the year seventeen
hundred and eighteen. It may readily
be supposed that the epigrammatists of the
day did not spare such ladies. The Moulin
de Javelle, a suburban guingette, was the
chief scene of these feminine irregularities.
There was, however, a whole village of such
guingettes, called the Port à l' Anglais (The
Englishman's Port), situated beyond the
Plaine d' Ivry, to the south-west of Paris.

Although the tavern had ceased to be a
source of inspiration, dramatic poets still
found consolation there—-none more
frequently than Dancourt, whose plays were so
often damned. As a matter of course, he
was always in the pit on the first night of
representation, and as soon as symptoms of
dissatisfaction on the part of the audience
began to manifest themselves, he invariably
took himself off to his favourite cabaret to
drown his disappointment in wine. The
house he patronised was La Cornemuse (The
Bagpipe), kept by one Cheret. The guests
who used to assemble there, knew Dancourt's
habits, and respected the silence he observed
while he drank his first bottle; but when he
was beginning to see daylight through the
second, and his melancholy gradually
disappeared, they rallied him upon his failure, and
none were merrier on the subject than he.
He then continued his libations as joyously
as if no mischance had befallen him, and
drew from his discomfiture the materials of
future success. Dancourt was in the habit,
of reading his pieces to his family before he
took them to the green-room. On one
occasion—-it was the first night of a comedy
unhappily named The Eclipse—-he assembled
his wife and children to learn their candid
opinion, that he might form some notion of
that of the public. It was a packed audience,
but this did not save the piece from failure.
The first scene appeared dull; during the
second the children yawned; in the third his
wife fell asleep. Dancourt saw it was of no
use to go on; he put his manuscript in his
pocket, and rose to leave the house. His
youngest child, a little girl, perceived the
movement, and going behind her father,
pulled him by the sleeve. The poet turned.
"I suppose, papa," she said, " you mean to
sup at Cheret's this evening! " Dancourt
laughed, kissed his daughter, and, safe in the
conclusion that his play would indeed be
eclipsed, did not go to the theatre to witness
the fact, but waited for the event at the
Cornemuse, and, when the news arrived, was
so well primed, that it produced no effect
whatever upon him, except, perhaps, of
increasing his gaiety. He had, in fact,
discounted his defeat, and in doing so had only
followed the advice which Molière so
humorously gives to those whom ill-fortune
pursues.

The chief places of resort for the fashionable
tipplers of Paris, a hundred and fifty
years since, were the cellars of the quarter
of the Temple known as the salle basse of
the famous Fite, and the cave of La Morellière;
and they corresponded, in many
respects, to the modern Coal-hole of the Savoy,
and the Cider Cellar in Maiden Lane.
Amongst the company, were always to
be found Chaulieu, La Fare, the Chevalier
de Bouillon, the Abbé Courtin, Palaprat, and
occasionally the Grand Prior, M. de
Vendôme; their Mæcenas. But even the site of
these haunts is now forgotten, and nothing
remains of them but the names of the
occupants.

There is, however, as much caprice in
tavern-seeking as in courting; and the
poetical bons-vivants aforesaid at one time
quitted the neighbourhood of the Temple for
the filthy Rue Quincampoix, in which Law
had established his famous bubble bank.
They installed themselves in this street at
the Wooden Sword (L'Epee de Bois), which
occupied the corner made by its intersection
with the Rue de Venise; and in this retreat
the stirring drama of the Mississipi scheme
was ever before them. From satirising the
all absorbing mania, the tippling poets,
seduced by the splendid promises of Law
and his agents, became objects of satire
themselves; free from the malady of
speculation, when first they went to the Wooden
Sword, they soon became diseased and lent