As you have lived in Italy, I think it useless to explain to you the Cafe Greco, the usual rendezvous of the pupils of the Academy and the artists of all countries who flock to Rome.  In Paris, rue de Coq-Saint-Honore, we have a distant counterpart of that institution in a cafe long known as that of the Cafe des Arts.  Two or three times a week I spend an evening there, where I meet several of my contemporaries in the French Academy in Rome.  They have introduced me to a number of journalists and men of letters, all of them amiable and distinguished men, with whom there is both profit and pleasure in exchanging ideas.

In a certain corner, where we gather, many questions of a nature to interest serious minds are debated; but the most eager interest, namely politics, takes the lead in our discussions.  In this little club the prevailing opinion is democratic; it is represented under all its aspects, the phalansterian Utopia not excepted.  That’s enough to tell you that before this tribunal the ways of the government are often judged with severity, and that the utmost liberty of language reigns in our discussions.  The consequence is that about a year ago the waiter who serves us habitually took me aside one day to give me, as he said, a timely warning.

“Monsieur,” he said, “you are watched by the police; and you would do well not to talk like Saint Paul, open-mouthed.”

“The police! my good friend,” I replied, “why the devil should the police watch me?  What I say, and a good deal else, is printed every morning in the newspapers.”

“No matter for that, they are watching you.  I have seen it.  There is a little old man, who takes a great deal of snuff, who is always within hearing distance of you; when you speak he seems to pay more attention to your words than to those of the others; and once I saw him write something down in a note-book in marks that were not writing.”

“Well, the next time he comes, point him out to me.”

The next time proved to be the next day.  The person shown to me was a short man with gray hair, a rather neglected person and a face deeply pitted with the small-pox, which seemed to make him about fifty years of age.  He frequently dipped in a large snuffbox; and seemed to be giving to my remarks an attention I might consider either flattering or inquisitive, as I pleased; but a certain air of gentleness and integrity in this supposed police-spy inclined me to the kinder interpretation.  I said so to the waiter, who had plumed himself on discovering a spy.

“Parbleu!” he replied, “they always put on that honeyed manner to hide their game.”

Two days later, on a Sunday, at the hour of vespers, in one of my rambles about old Paris—­for which, as you know, I always had a taste —­I happened to enter the church of Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile, the parish church of the remote quarter of the city which bears that name.  This church is a building of very little interest, no matter what historians and certain “Guides to Paris” may say.  I should therefore have passed rapidly through it if the remarkable talent of the organist who was performing part of the service had not induced me to remain.