Ancelot--literary husband of a literary wife--was elected to the Academy: _Le ménage Ancelot, par ses vers et sa prose,_ _Devait à ce fauteuil arriver en tout cas,_ _Car la femme accouchait toujours de quelque chose,_ _Quand le mari n'engendrait pas._ His dress was of the highest elegance in a day when men were not confined to a funereal black. His blue frock-coat, tight-waisted with amply curving skirts, broad velvet _revers_, and gilt buttons, fitted as neatly as one of his own epigrams; his blue waistcoats and light grey trousers were treasures, his hat the curliest and shiniest to be seen. In his own apartment he tempered the shadows of his Gothic furniture by wearing a green silk dressing-gown and red cashmere trousers. So long as their fortunes lasted he and his companions bade dull care begone. At midday they left the softest of beds, and, after a serious hour of dressing, met for déjeuner at the Café Anglais, the Maison d'Or, or the Café Hardi. By four they were to be seen in force upon the boulevard, displaying their waistcoats and quizzing the ladies upon the marble steps of Tortoni's. Before dinner they would visit a drawing-room or two, buy a picture or bargain for some _bibelot_--a Toledo blade or a Turkish narghile--with a dealer in curiosities. The evening programme was a set of variations upon the ground bass of dinner, opera, supper. Roger de Beauvoir was one of the company who haunted the famous _loge infernale_ at the Opéra, and it is needless to say that their attention was devoted more to the ballet than to the music, for they were all connoisseurs in choreography and had a personal acquaintance with the dancers, which developed in most cases into something more than Platonic affection. The _foyer des artistes_ was the enchanted garden of _la haute Bohème_, where they sought their "Cynthia of this minute" as the true Bohemians did at the Chaumière or the Closerie des Lilas.