As I have said, Saturday was the day of general reception at the Hôtel de Pënâfiel, but Wednesday was the marquise's day of _prima-sera._ On these evenings she only received until ten or eleven o'clock the few friends who came to call before going to more formal entertainments elsewhere. The next day but one would be one of these Wednesdays; I awaited it impatiently. I forgot to say that I sent M. de Cernay the same day the two hundred louis that he had won. CHAPTER XVII PRIMA-SERA Before starting for the Hôtel de Pënâfiel, I compared my present state of anxiety and distrust with the careless abandonment of my former life, and the days I spent with Hélène, when, no matter at what time I entered the old salon at Serval, I was sure of being received with pleasant smiles from every one. Without dreading this interview with Madame de Pënâfiel, I knew that, although by common consent she was abused and calumniated, her salon was held in high consideration. It had great importance in the fact that its judgment was not to be impeached; right or wrong, its stamp was the valuation that would henceforth be accepted by the world. The number of such salons, whose influence is so great that it irrevocably decides the rank of each individual in good society, is already restricted, and grows less every year. The reason is this, there are no longer any men who are willing to submit to its restrictions. The life of the club and the representative chamber, that other great political club, has swept away the life of the salon. Between to-day's speech and that of yesterday, between a game of whist or a revenge of two or three thousand louis, the anxious and absorbing interest in a race in which a favourite horse is entered for an enormous sum, there remains very little time for that intimate, flowery, and elegant conversation, which has no "echo in the country," as the monomaniacs of the tribune say, and helps you neither to win nor lose at whist or on the turf. And then the life of the salon is a constraint. You must appear in evening dress to go and smother in a heated reception, and then be frozen while waiting for your carriage; whereas it is so much easier and pleasanter to stretch out in a soft armchair at the club, where you take a comfortable nap after dinner, from which you awake refreshed, and ready for an exciting game of whist, with no interruption but that of your cigar. However, at the period of which I write, there were still a few houses where people conversed, and the Hôtel de Pënâfiel was one of these eccentricities.