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The greatest of these three great cafes, the Deux Magots, is the newest (1875), but it seems the most venerable and the most welcoming. If Lipp's wonders who you are, and the Flore wonders how much you've got, the Deux Magots wonders what you'd like to be served. Located just across from the old church, the Deux Magots derives its strange name from two large Chinese statues that sit high up in the center of the cafe. Prices today are appalling: a Coca-Cola costs $5, a Bloody Mary $10. But as one sits on the eastern terrace of the Deux Magots in a spring sunset, looking out toward the medieval church spire across a newly installed array of lilacs, tulips and apple trees all in flower, one can hardly help feeling that such a vista is worth almost any price.
Even back in the '40s, when prices were a lot lower, one went to Lipp's or the Flore only on special occasions. For hanging around, there were cheaper places, the Royal or the Bonaparte or the Mabillon. And though St. Germain is still full of wealthy and successful people, the artistic center seems to be moving back to the Right Bank, to the slummy area being rapidly gentrified between those two new cultural real estate projects, the flamboyantly ugly Beaubourg art museum and the unflamboyantly ugly Bastille Opera. "Try the Cafe Beaubourg," says one young American, "but I don't think anybody's writing any novels there." "Try the Cafe Coste in Les Halles," says another.
Both are handsome new establishments, with a balcony for crowd-watchers, and there are lots of youths and lots of action, lots of blue denim, brown leather and black suede. But one suspects that among all the fire eaters and street jugglers, there are more drug peddlers than artists in this crowded scene. "Terrible people," says one old-timer, speaking of Les Halles the way New Yorkers speak of New Jersey. "Terrible suburban gang kids."
Aging and nostalgic visitors who find the cafe scene not what it used to be also find good reasons for that. One is that Paris cafes flourished because residential hotel rooms were often dark and cold; prosperity has changed that. Another is that, with prices high, many people prefer the neighborhood cafe to the famous institutions. Still, the 40th anniversary can be celebrated only at the Cafe de la Mairie, and though it has become a bit fancy -- the old goldfish tank has disappeared, along with the chessboard -- it is still a neighborhood cafe. It bears its literary traditions lightly. It hardly remembers that Saul Bellow used to drink here, and William Faulkner too, or that Djuna Barnes set several scenes in Nightwood here. In fact, when the proprietor was once asked what she remembered of Barnes, she said she had never heard of her. But the two coupes of icy Pommery tasted grand. Hemingway was right: Paris is much changed, but the moveable feast can still be celebrated.