At about two in the morning, as supper ended, no one was left sitting
round the table but intimate friends, proved by intercourse of fifteen
years, and some persons of great taste and good breeding, who knew the
world. By tacit agreement, perfectly carried out, at supper every one
renounced his pretensions to importance. Perfect equality set the
tone. But indeed there was no one present who was not very proud of
being himself.
Mademoiselle des Touches always insists on her guests remaining at
table till they leave, having frequently remarked the change which a
move produces in the spirit of a party. Between the dining-room and
the drawing-room the charm is destroyed. According to Sterne, the
ideas of an author after shaving are different from those he had
before. If Sterne is right, may it not be boldly asserted that the
frame of mind of a party at table is not the same as that of the same
persons returned to the drawing-room? The atmosphere is not heady, the
eye no longer contemplates the brilliant disorder of the dessert, lost
are the happy effects of that laxness of mood, that benevolence which
comes over us while we remain in the humor peculiar to the well-filled
man, settled comfortably on one of the springy chairs which are made
in these days.
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