8 . 4 Ferdinand Lunel, Brasserie le Bas-Rhin etle D'Harcourt, ca. 1888, Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliotheque Nationale, Brasseries served by women (fifth arrondissement) - Le Bas-Rhin and Paris. le D'Harcourt nity of this subject for an avant-garde artist like Manet. Indeed, I shall use our investigation of Manet's paintings of this highly charged subject to reach some conclusions about the meaning of Impressionist ambiguity. Many popular images of female-staffed brasseries made in the i88os emphasize intem- perate drinking, and most of them show a seated server enticing a man to carouse. Artists often included a stack of saucers (following the French tradition of a saucer standing for one drink served) as the most efficient way of indicating that a customer had had much to drink. In Ferdi- nand LunePs drawing of the interior of the brasserie Le Bas-Rhin and le D'Harcourt done in the late i88os (fig. 84), the tower of saucers shows that the man had exceeded two dozen drinks. The crockery on the table of the principal bon vivant in Jean Beraud's Brasserie of 1883 (fig. 85) tells us that he is on his seventh round. The most prominent tippler in Fernand Fau's illustration for A. Carel's book of 1884, Les Brasseries dfemmes a Paris, has also surpassed the six-drink mark (fig. 86), while another of Fau's illustrations for Carel's text (fig. 87) emphasizes the indecorous physical proximity of waitress and drinker. The gentleman-student berated by his father in Robida's "New Paris" of 1884 (fig. 88) is clearly shown to have been frequenting brasseries because of his romantic interest in one of the waitresses. Robida therefore avoids the topic of drink by focusing on a persuasively romantic server instead. Looking back from the vantage point of 1906, Dr. Felix Regnault, a historian of prostitu- tion, stressed the relative decorum of the brasserie waitress's solicitation of a customer: "These establishments resemble ordinary cafes where you sit down to have a beer; soliciting is not bru- tal. The waitress simply comes over and sits down at the customer's table without being invited, serves herself, encourages the customer to spend money, strikes up a lewd conversation, and finally offers her services. . . . She uses a neighboring hotel to turn the trick. Actually, very few 43 brasseries have rooms on the premises for the client." Martineau also described a relative po- liteness in the typical brasserie seduction, especially when compared to the rough assaults that 138 took place in the bars known as debits de vin: "Soliciting there is less coarse. Sometimes it has a