Note 12 — Chapter IV

The Hôtel Castellane was a welcome exception to this, and politics were rigorously tabooed, the reading of long-winded poems was interdicted. Politicians were simply reminded that the adjacent Élysée-Bourbon, or even the Hôtel Pontalba, might still contain sufficiently lively ghosts to discuss such all-important matters with them;[12] poets who fancied they had something to say worth hearing, were invited to have it said for them from behind the footlights by rival companies of amateurs, each of which in many respects need not have feared comparison with the professional one of the Comédie-Française. Amateur theatricals were, therefore, the principal feature of the entertainments at the Hôtel Castellane; but there were "off nights" to the full as brilliant as the others. There was neither acting nor dancing on such occasions, the latter amusement being rarely indulged in, except at the grand balls which often followed one another in rapid succession.