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By a searching sweep of the eye I sought out a place where I would not be too much crowded, and so I went and sat down by the side of a man who seemed to me to be old, and who smoked a halfpenny clay pipe, which had become as black as coal. From six to eight beer saucers were piled up on the table in front of him, indicating the number of "bocks" he had already absorbed.
I felt my face getting red. I insisted: "But every day?" "Every day it is the same thing," was his reply, accompanied with a thick puff of tobacco smoke. He then tapped with a sou on the top of the marble table, to attract the attention of the waiter, and called out: "Waiter, two 'bocks." A voice in the distance repeated: "Two bocks for the fourth table."
A voice in the distance repeated: "Two bocks, instead of four." Another voice, more distant still, shouted out: "Here they are, sir, here they are." Immediately there appeared a man with a white apron, carrying two "bocks," which he sat down foaming on the table, the spouts facing over the edge, on to the sandy floor. Des Barrets emptied his glass at a single draught and replaced it on the table.
"You see what I am doing," he answered, quite resignedly. I felt my face getting red. I insisted: "But every day?" "Every day is alike to me," was his response, accompanied with a thick puff of tobacco smoke. He then tapped on the top of the marble table with a sou, to attract the attention of the waiter, and called out: "Waiter, two 'bocks."
Since twenty years he had been dipping his large red beard in the bocks of all the democratic Cafes. He had spent, with the help of his brethren and friends, a good sized fortune inherited from his father, a retired Confectioner, and he was impatiently waiting for the advent of the Republic to secure a political position deserved by so many revolutionary libations.
"You see what I am doing," he answered, quite resignedly. I felt my face getting red. I insisted: "But every day?" "Every day is alike to me," was his response accompanied with a thick puff of tobacco smoke. He then tapped on the top of the marble table with a sou, to attract the attention of the waiter, and called out: "Waiter, two 'bocks."
Almost every day he passed before the Cafe des Colonies, and often he could distinguish through the window the figure of the little black-skinned maid serving "bocks" or glasses of brandy to the sailors of the port.
It is the pleasant custom of this coterie to meet on winter evenings in unfrequented cafés, transformed by them for the time into clubs, where they recite new-made verses, discuss books and plays, enunciate paradoxes that make the very waiters shudder, and, between their “bocks,” plan vast revolutions in the world of literature.
They should all have been at the spectacle; all had promised to go; and yet they sat on over their alcools and bocks, and instead of going to the ballet began to abuse it.
"Deux bocks," cried the waiter, slapping down on the table two saucers and two stout glass mugs filled with frothing golden liquid. George, unaccustomed to the ritual of cafés, began at once to sip, but Mr. Ingram, aware that the true boulevardier always ignores his bock for several minutes, behaved accordingly. "She was evidently extremely rich.
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