the sumptuous coffee
functions of the ambassador from Mohammed IV to the court of Louis XIV.

Isaac D'Israeli best describes them in his _Curiosities of Literature_:

On bended knee, the black slaves of the Ambassador, arrayed in the
most gorgeous Oriental costumes, served the choicest Mocha coffee
in tiny cups of egg-shell porcelain, hot, strong and fragrant,
poured out in saucers of gold and silver, placed on embroidered
silk doylies fringed with gold bullion, to the grand dames, who
fluttered their fans with many grimaces, bending their piquant
faces--be-rouged, be-powdered and be-patched--over the new and
steaming beverage.

It was in 1669 or 1672 that Madame de Sevigne (Marie de Rabutin-Chantal;
1626-96), the celebrated French letter-writer, is said to have made that
famous prophecy, "There are two things Frenchmen will never
swallow--coffee and Racine's poetry," sometimes abbreviated into,
"Racine and coffee will pass." What Madame really said, according to one
authority, was that Racine was writing for Champmesle, the actress, and
not for posterity; again, of coffee she said, "_s'en degouterait comme;
d'un indigne favori_" (People will become disgusted with it as with an
unworthy favorite).

Larousse says the double judgment was wrongly attributed to Mme. de
Sevigne. The celebrated aphorism, like many others, was forged later.
Mme. de Sevigne said, "Racine made his comedies for the Champmesle--not
for the ages to come." This was in 1672. Four years later, she said to
her daughter, "You have done well to quit coffee. Mlle. de Mere has also
given it up."

[Illustration: COFFEE WAS FIRST SOLD AND SERVED PUBLICLY IN THE FAIR OF
ST.-GERMAIN

From a Seventeenth-Century Print]

However it may have been, the amiable letter-writer was destined to live
to see Frenchmen yielding at once to the lure of coffee and to the
poetical artifices of the greatest dramatic craftsman of his day.

While it is recorded that coffee made slow progress with the court of
Louis XIV, the next king, Louis XV, to please his mistress, du Barry,
gave it a tremendous vogue. It is related that he spent $15,000 a year
for coffee for his daughters.

Meanwhile, in 1672, one Pascal, an Armenian, first sold coffee publicly
in Paris. Pascal, who, according to one account, was brought to Paris by
Soliman Aga, offered the beverage for sale from a tent, which was also a
kind of booth, in the fair of St.-Germ