Old Mr. Parvenu went up to bed,
And the guest said 'Good-night' to the butler instead."

But light come, light go. Ball-going is elysian when one is very young
and cheerful and active, but it is a pleasure which, for nine men out of
ten, soon palls. Dinner-society, as Cardinal Grandison knew, is a more
serious affair, and admission to it is not so lightly attained.

When Sydney Smith returned from a visit to Paris, he wrote, in the
fulness of his heart:

"I care very little about dinners, but I shall not easily forget a
_matelote_ at the 'Rochers de Cancale,' or an almond tart at Montreuil,
or a _poulet a la Tartare_ at Grignon's. These are impressions which no
changes in future life can obliterate."

I am tempted to pursue the line of thought thus invitingly opened, but I
forbear; for it really has no special connexion with the retrospective
vein. I am now describing the years 1876-1880, and dinners then were
pretty much what they are now. The new age of dining had begun. Those
frightful hecatombs of sheep and oxen which Francatelli decreed had made
way for more ethereal fare. The age-long tyranny of "The Joint" was
already undermined. I have indeed been one of a party of forty in the
dog-days, where a belated haunch of venison cried aloud for decent
burial; but such outrages were even then becoming rare. The champagne of
which a poet had beautifully said:

"How sad and bad and mad it was,
And Oh! how it was sweet!"

had been banished in favour of the barely alcoholic liquor which foams
in modern glasses. And, thanks to the influence of King Edward VII,
after-dinner drinking had been exorcised by cigarettes. The portentous
piles of clumsy silver which had overshadowed our fathers'
tables--effigies of Peace and Plenty, Racing Cups and Prizes for fat
cattle--had been banished to the plate-closets; bright china and
brighter flowers reigned in their stead. In short, a dinner thirty-five
years ago was very like a dinner to-day. It did not take me long to find
that (with Cardinal Grandison) "I liked dinner-society very much," and
that "you see the world there and hear things which you do not hear
otherwise."

I have already described the methods by which ball-society was, and
perhaps is, recruited. An incident which befell me in my second season
threw a similar light on the more obscure question of dinner-society.
One day I received a large card which intimated that Mr. and Mrs.
Goldmor