It seems plain that schemers would choose more sequestered quarters to arrange their plans, that politicians would not gather here in company to discuss anything save formalities, where the sharp-eared may hear, and it would scarcely be justified on the score of thirst, for the majority of those who frequent these more gorgeous places have no craving for liquor.

Nevertheless, the fact that here men gather, there chatter, here love to pass and rub elbows, must be explained upon some grounds.

It must be that a strange bundle of passions and vague desires give rise to such a curious social institution or it would not be.
Drouet, for one, was lured as much by his longing for pleasure as by his desire to shine among his betters.

The many friends he met here dropped in because they craved, without, perhaps, consciously analyzing it, the company, the glow, the atmosphere which they found.

One might take it, after all, as an auger of the better social order, for the things which they satisfied here, though sensory, were not evil.