midday
I looked round , and found myself in a dingy , ordinary sort of Café , in no wise differing from any other dingy , ordinary sort of Café in that part of Paris . The decorations were ugly enough to be modern . The ceiling was as black with gas-fumes and tobacco smoke as any other ceiling in any other estaminet in the Quartier Latin . The waiters looked as waiters always look before midday -- sleepy , discontented , and unwashed . A few young men of the regular student type were scattered about here and there at various tables , reading , smoking , chatting , breakfasting , and reading the morning papers . In an alcove at the upper end of the second room -LRB- for there were two , one opening from the other -RRB- stood a blackened , broken-nosed , plaster bust of Voltaire , upon the summit of whose august wig some irreverent customer had perched a particularly rakish-looking hat . Just in front of this alcove and below the bust stood a marble-topped table , at one end of which two young men were playing dominoes to the accompaniment of the matutinal absinthe .