Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. My introduction to the celebrities of the day—The Cafe de Paris—The old Prince Demidoff—The old man's mania—His sons—The furniture and attendance at the Cafe de Paris—Its high prices—A mot of Alfred de Musset —The cuisine—A rebuke of the proprietor to Balzac—A version by one of his predecessors of the cause of Vatel's suicide—Some of the habitues— Their intercourse with the attendants—Their courteous behaviour towards one another—Le veau a la casserole—What Alfred de Musset, Balzac, and Alexandre Dumas thought of it—A silhouette of Alfred de Musset—His brother Paul on his election as a member of the Academic—A silhouette of Balzae, -between sunset and sunrise—A curious action against the publishers of an almanack—A full-length portrait of Balzac—His pecuniary embarrassments—His visions of wealth and speculations—His constant neglect of his duties as a National Guard—His troubles in consequence thereof—L'Hotel des Haricots—Some of his fellow-prisoners—Adam, the composer of "Le Postilion de Loujumenu"—Eugene Sue; his portrait— His dandyism—The origin of the Paris Jockey Club—Eugene Sue becomes a member—The success of " Les Mysteres de Paris"—The origin of "Le Juif-Errant"—Sue makes himself objectionable to the members of the Jockey Club—His name struck off the list—His decline and disappearance. If these notes are ever published, the reader will gather from the foregoing that, unlike many Englishmen brought up in Paris, I was allowed from a very early age to mix with all sorts and conditions of men. As I intend to say as little as possible about myself, there is no necessity to reveal the reason of this early emancipation from all restraint, which resulted in my being on familiar terms with a great many celebrities before I had reached my twenty-first year. I had n... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.