Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 100.djvu/300



the publication of the first volume of the "Memoirs of a Bourgeois of Paris," by Dr. Véron, a bourgeois of the opposition has published the memoirs of one Bilboquet, wherein the means by which wealth and station among the redoubtable Bourgeoisie of Paris are to be obtained are amusingly unfolded, and the steps to fame and repute actually cut from the feet of some imaginary pretender.

As the habitué according to his own account, of all the leading cafés and restaurants of Paris, as collecting there the news of the day, seeking for new and original acquaintances, studying literature, art, and politics in their more accessible moods, and finally as himself proprietor, among his innumerable schemes and projects, of the Café Véron, and interested in consequence in the prosperity and success of one of the greatest spécialités, one of, unquestionably, the most distinctive features of the French capital. Dr. Véron gives in his second volume a very interesting account of the origin of the chief of these establishments, of the circumstances which brought them into repute or notoriety, of the leading