Free The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough Page B

blessing.”
    Mademoiselle Mars, whose real name was Anne Françoise Boutet, had been an unrivaled favorite on the French stage for nearly thirty years andhad made Molière her
pièce de résistance
. Her pronunciation was considered the finest model of classic French.
    “Molière could not have had a proper conception of his own genius, not having seen Mademoiselle Mars,” wrote Sanderson, who had waited in line for more than two hours to buy a ticket. Charles Sumner saw her in Molière’s
Les Femmes Savantes
. “Her voice is like a silver flute, her eye like a gem.” He knew he would remember the evening as long as he lived.

     
    And following the theater, there was more. “Thousands in merry moods throng the walks,” wrote Thomas Appleton, who had no medical studies to cope with, and few if any worries about spending money. His wealthy father, a Boston merchant, banker, and textile manufacturer, had told him there was no reason to deny himself whatever was “comfortable.”
    Appleton adored the restaurants and cafés of Paris, especially after dark when the light from their windows was like “the blaze of day.” He had made a point of dining at several of the finest, including the Rocher de Cancale, known for its oysters, and Tortoni’s, on the boulevard des Italiens, where in summer after the opera the
haut ton
flocked to “take ices.”
    “
Cafés
abound in Paris, particularly in the principal streets and the boulevards,” the newcomers read in their
Galignani’s
guidebook.
It is impossible to conceive either their number, variety, or elegance, without having seen them. In no other city is there anything to resemble them; and they are not only unique, but in every way adapted for convenience and amusement.
     
    The most celebrated concentration was at the Palais Royal, where the modern restaurant had originated in the eighteenth century. The Café de Foy, the oldest and still one of the finest in Paris, Périgord, Café Corazza, and Véry were all in the Palais Royal. For the cost of a dinner at Véry, it was said, one could live comfortably in the provinces for a month. “Alas, my poor roasting and frying countrymen!” wrote Sanderson after dining at Véry and observing other Americans trying with equal difficulty to fathom the choices offered on the menu. “Your best way in this emergency,”he advised, “is to call the garçon and leave all to him, and sit still like a good child and take what is given to you.”
    The gaslit Café des Mille Colonnes outdid them all in mirrors, and the elegant Trois Frères Provençaux was where Holmes, Jackson, Warren, and others of the medical students convened regularly on Sundays. As much as the food and the wine, they relished the talk that went with such evenings in such an atmosphere. Talk helped one shape one’s thoughts, said Holmes, the greatest talker of the lot.
    At Véfour, which many considered the most beautiful, rows of tables were covered with snow-white cloths, and the
garçons
[waiters] dressed to match. Each had one jacket pocket filled with silver spoons, another with silver forks, a corkscrew in a vest pocket and a snow-white napkin, or
serviette
, on the left arm. The menu was the size of a newspaper.
    At the Café des Aveugles, below ground level, a small band of blind musicians played. The Café de la Paix was described in
Galignani’s Guide
as richly decorated and much frequented by “ladies of easy virtue and Parisian dandies of the second order.”
    The Palais Royal, Holmes liked to say, was to Paris what Paris was to Europe. If enjoyment was the object of life, as some philosophers held, no one spot in the world offered such a variety of choices. The principal restaurants and the shops shimmering with jewelry and Sèvres china were on the garden level, as well as shoemakers, linen drapers, waistcoat makers, and tailors. On the level above were still more restaurants and a number of gambling houses. Some of the gambling houses were