So far as I can recollect, the meetings of the Athénée were held in a lower hall of the Palais-Royal, which had its entrance from the rue de Valois. They discussed all sorts of topics that would have been insufferable in drawing-rooms, but which at the Athénée were simply tedious. The people who discussed these tedious subjects had the right to a certain number of tickets to distribute among the members of their families, their friends and their acquaintances. They could have discussed these subjects quite well alone, but, for some inexplicable reason, they preferred to have an audience. On this particular evening the hall was full. M. Villenave was very popular in society, and, besides, these meetings had a certain celebrity. If I were condemned to be hung, I could not to save my life say what they talked of that night. It was probably some treatise on a second-rate deceased author, who served as an excuse to the writer to deliver a few raps to the living. M. Villenave conducted the meeting: he addressed it standing, by the aid of a couple of candelabras and a glass of _eau sucrée_ near him. He was a fine-looking old man of, perhaps, at that time, some sixty-six or sixty-eight years of age. He had splendid white hair, daintily curled about his temples; black eyes that flashed with quite Southern fire; he was very tall but stooped a little from much bending over a desk; there was something distinguished-looking and graceful in his movements and manners. I had stopped modestly by the door for two reasons: first, because I was yet too unknown to imagine I had the right to put the speaker himself or anybody else out for my sake; secondly, as I had to return to my office by half-past nine, it was more convenient to be near the door than elsewhere, in order to escape incognito, as I had entered. Delanoue, who was more familiar with the company than I, left me to go and joke with them, during the short intervals when the sitting broke up to give M. Villenave time to take breath.