The sobering beverage

Michelet

Coffee, the sobering beverage, a mighty nutriment of the brain, unlike spirituous liquors, increases purity and clarity; coffee, which at length substitutes stimulation of the mind for stimulation of the sexual faculties!...

The strong coffee of San Domingo, which Buffon, Diderot, and Rousseau drank, redoubled the ardor of the ardent souls—and the prophets who assembled day after day in the Cafe Procope saw, with penetrating glance, the depths of their black drink the illumination of the year of the revolution.