Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 100.djvu/306

288 Florence; he kept a whole troop of actors in his pay; they were called the Troupe Demidoff; he used to have comedies, vaudevilles, and comic operas* performed in his palace at Florence. A whole hotel was retained for the accommodation of the artists. There was nothing going on at M. Demidoff's, especially in Florence, but theatrical representations, sumptuous trails, and brilliant concerts.

Worn out, aged before his time, and a martyr to gout, M. Demidoff was introduced to his own festivities in a rolling chair, from which he never moved; if he withdrew at an early hour, the amusements continued ail the same; sometimes he fainted away, but the orchestra and the dancers lost none of their vivacity. M. Demidoff was carried away senseless, that was all.

Cut off from all enjoyments, he sought excitement in listening to the pleasures of others. He had one intimate friend, a clever Russian, who slept in an appartement near to his own. When this miserable rich man, worn out by gouty pains, like Laocoon by the serpents, could not sleep, which was frequently the case, he would send for his friend at any hour of the night. "Look," he would say, "here are two or three rolls of a thousand francs for your gambling expenses; now, in return, amuse me by telling me what you did yesterday, and what you intend to do to-morrow.

M. Demidoff was a martyr to opulence; he would willingly have given for a good round sum his valuable paintings by masters, his rare and marvellous curiosities, his admirable works of art, even the treasures accumulated at Florence, where in the midst of his saloons, with no protection but the windows, he had collected bracelets, collars of brilliants, rings, turquoities, sapphires, diamonds, emeralds, rubies—in one word, riches that would have saved an empire.

The house of this opulent Russian is now the Café de Paris, "known," says M. Véron, "to all Europe. The English officer who if fighting against the Birmans, the Russian officer who is combating in Khiva, beyond the sea of Aral, on the banks of the Oxus, dream at their bivouacks of the pleasures of a good dinner at the Café de Paris."

The Café Desmares, at the corner of the Rue de l'Université and the Rue de Bal, enjoyed at one time considerable political celebrity. M. Desmares was brother to a fair actress of the Théâtre Vaudeville. "I can't bear a dealer in hot water," the actress used to say of her brother; "I can't endure a woman who treads the boards," retorted the restaurateur. A nobleman and a philosopher, not abundantly gifted with the good things of the world, used to say he had made Desmares' reputation. "This poor Desmares has had very little education; I doubt even if he can read or write. One morning I came into his café; it was crowded, all the tables Were occupied; so the moment I perceived Desmares I called out, 'Good morning, old college chum!'"

This nobleman used to write verses, but never of greater length than eight syllables. "I write," he used to say, "upon my knees, and in my poverty my flesh has so wasted away, that the table is not wide enough for more than four feet."

There were, in 1825, upwards of nine hundred restaurateurs; those above-mentioned are the most celebrated, and their reputation has survived all revolutions. The Lointiers, Beauvilliers, Grignon, the Rocher de Cancale, all enjoyed great celebrity under the Empire and the Restoration, but they are no longer in existence.

"The daily habit of dining at the restaurateurs," says M. Véron, "was to me an exhaustless source of surprises, discoveries, and revelations of humanity."