We cultivated literary society extensively. A Dr. Löwenthal, who had written to me on account of my _Inventarium einer Seele_ when we were still in the Caucasus, and with whom, after an ardent exchange of ideas, we two had become close friends, made us acquainted with Max Nordau. The greatly celebrated author of “Conventional Lies,” although then only thirty-eight, had very thick snow-white hair, which was very effective with his black beard, black eyes, and interesting face. There were some unforgettable hours which we four spent in conversation about God’s magnificent world and the conventional, lie-ridden world of humanity. In the Buloz house, where we attended a ball a few days after the Adam soirée, there was not so strong a flavor of politics as in the home of the _Nouvelle revue_; here homage was paid to only two things, the _Revue_ _des deux mondes_ and the Académie Française. The Buloz house had the reputation of being a center of the literary and intellectual life of Paris. On Madame Buloz’s Tuesdays half of the Forty Immortals were to be found there, and of course all the collaborators of the _Revue_, from which the Academy so often draws its recruits. The solid old _palais_ in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, with its ground floor devoted to the offices of the monthly, and its big reception rooms on the floor above, had a grave and dignified air. The furnishings of the salon were of rich and substantial plainness. The tone all through the house was rather stiff, puristic, erudite—in short, academic. The same tone, you know, that permeates the so often uncut pages of the articles in the old _Revue_. The married life of the husband and wife seemed to be exemplary. M. Buloz, a man of serious and steady look, and at the same time amiable, of about forty, with full red beard trimmed to a point—liking best of all to talk about his _Revue_, the conduct of which cost him much labor, for he read every line of the manuscripts that were sent in, and sternly repelled any encroachment of frivolous realism—who could have suspected at that time that a few years later he would be compelled to part from his _Revue_, and that under such frivolous circumstances as he would never have permitted one of his colleagues to incorporate in a novel? Most surprising and startling for the whole serious _milieu_ came the sudden discovery that M. Buloz had wasted nearly all his property, besides incurring a million in debts,—all for a woman. A separation resulted—whether Madame Buloz got one or whether she pardoned him I do not know—but a separation from his _Revue_, the proud paternal inheritance. He was forced to leave the management; and the monthly, which ever since its foundation, for more than a half century, had borne the name of Charles Buloz, both father and son, came out with the name of Brunetière.