One evening when Renan was discoursing at some length, she had several times to call to order the dramatist Labiche (author of The Italian Straw Hat).

The hostess silenced any disorderly interruption by ringing a little porcelain bell which stood at her right hand. One guest at a time was permitted to orate, and his chances of a second invitation depended on the brilliance of his performance. About a dozen guests attended her poorly cooked dinners in the Rue d'Astorg, and Madame Aubernon alone decided the subject for discussion. Madame Aubernon, however, a somewhat vulgar aristocrat of the old school, passionately interested in literature and the theater, conducted her rival salon like a lion tamer. Her guests never felt like performing animals. In barely a generation, Princesse Mathilde had learned an aristocratic ease which gave her the proper 'presence' for a salon. Dumas fils, Henri de Régnier, Maupassant, and Anatole France came to her simple early dinners, which Proust described affectionately in one of his best Figaro society articles. During the Third Republic she again began receiving in her house in the Rue de Berri (today the Belgian Embassy) and continued until after 1900, when she was over eighty. Most elevated member of the new nobility, Princesse Mathilde Bonaparte, Napoleon's niece, did not mince her words: 'The French revolution? Why, without it I'd be selling oranges in the streets of Ajaccio.' Her sympathy and loyalty had begun by attracting Théophile Gautier, Flaubert, and Renan to a dangerously liberal salon during the Second Empire. TheĬharles Giraud, Salon of Princess Mathilde Bonaparte The revolution had not destroyed the old aristocracy, but had set up beside it another: the Napoleonic. The aristocracy still cultivated the conversation of what were assumed to be great minds. Of all the stages that made up the city, the most formalized and demanding was the salon. Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years (4) - From the Salons to the Café

The banquet years by roger shattuck