midnight
The entertainment was to begin at ten o'clock . I was to be dressed as Cleopatra and to receive my guests in the drawing-room . At the sound of a fanfare of trumpets I was to go into the theatre preceded by a line of pages , and accompanied by my husband . After we had taken our places in a private box a great ballet , brought specially from a London music-hall , was to give a performance lasting until midnight . Then there was to be a cotillon , led by Alma herself with my husband , and after supper the dancing was to be resumed and kept up until sunrise , when a basketful of butterflies and doves -LRB- sent from the South of France -RRB- were to be liberated from cages , and to rise in a multicoloured cloud through the sunlit space . I was sick and ashamed when I thought of this vain and gaudy scene and the object which I supposed it was intended to serve . The end of it all was that I wrote to my father , concealing the real cause of my suffering , but telling him he could not possibly be aware of what was being done in his name and with his money , and begging him to put an end to the entertainment altogether .