One of my all-time favorite eating and drinking establishments anywhere was the Café de Cluny, ideally located at the best intersection in the world, that of the Boulevard St. Germain and the Boulevard St. Michel, across from the eponymous museum (and former abbey), in the heart of the Latin Quarter in Paris. The Cluny was cozy and easy-going and much less pretentious and expensive than the Flore and Deux Magots, just up St. Germain. Founded in 1869, and patronized over the years by such as Verlaine, Rimbaud, Koestler, Marguerite Duras, Malraux, and (when the Flore started to make noises about their bar tab) the dreaded Sartre-de Beauvoir twins, the Cluny was the annual venue of the Goncourt prize award ceremonies and one of Hemingway's favorite cafés. All in all, it had a pedigree, one would think, that would ensure the establishment's survival. So I thought, and counted on it to be there whenever I was. Hélas, non. Picture my dismay when, during a recent visit, I toddled up to the front door only to discover, not the venerable Cluny, but...a pizza parlor. Not a Hut, nor Domino's, nor Papa John's, but something equally infra dig. The great Cluny was gone. I was gobsmacked. Suddenly anything horrible seemed possible; everything human was full of hubris. I was reminded of Shelley's "Ozymandias": "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" 

Anyway, in The Wrecker, a novel co-authored by Robert Louis Stevenson and his stepson Lloyd Osbourne, I came across this recollection of a visit to the Cluny in its heyday. It brought it all back: a rainy afternoon, the lights on early, a warming Armagnac and a smoke by the window, an unhurried perusal of the day's Figaro and the evening's menu and carte des vins, perhaps another Armagnac...  
"I pocketed the money carelessly, lingered awhile chaffing, strolled leisurely to the door; and then (fast as my trembling legs could carry me) round the corner to the Cafe de Cluny. French waiters are deft and speedy; they were not deft enough for me; and I had scarce decency to let the man set the wine upon the table or put the butter alongside the bread, before my glass and my mouth were filled. Exquisite bread of the Cafe de Cluny, exquisite first glass of old Pommard tingling to my wet feet, indescribable first olive culled from the hors d'oeuvre--I suppose, when I come to lie dying, and the lamp begins to grow dim, I shall still recall your savor. Over the rest of that meal, and the rest of the evening, clouds lie thick; clouds perhaps of Burgundy; perhaps, more properly, of famine and repletion."   

Sic transit gloria mundi. Or bugger it. Or words to that effect.