At one o'clock on the 16th I went to the Rue d'Antin. The voice of the
auctioneer could be heard from the outer door. The rooms were crowded
with people. There were all the celebrities of the most elegant
impropriety, furtively examined by certain great ladies who had again
seized the opportunity of the sale in order to be able to see, close at
hand, women whom they might never have another occasion of meeting, and
whom they envied perhaps in secret for their easy pleasures. The Duchess
of F. elbowed Mlle. A., one of the most melancholy examples of our
modern courtesan; the Marquis de T. hesitated over a piece of furniture
the price of which was being run high by Mme. D., the most elegant and
famous adulteress of our time; the Duke of Y., who in Madrid is supposed
to be ruining himself in Paris, and in Paris to be ruining himself in
Madrid, and who, as a matter of fact, never even reaches the limit of
his income, talked with Mme. M., one of our wittiest story-tellers, who
from time to time writes what she says and signs what she writes, while
at the same time he exchanged confidential glances with Mme. de N., a
fair ornament of the Champs-Elysees, almost always dressed in pink
or blue, and driving two big black horses which Tony had sold her for
10,000 francs, and for which she had paid, after her fashion; finally,
Mlle. R., who makes by her mere talent twice what the women of the world
make by their dot and three times as much as the others make by their
amours, had come, in spite of the cold, to make some purchases, and was
not the least looked at among the crowd.
We might cite the initials of many more of those who found themselves,
not without some mutual surprise, side by side in one room. But we fear
to weary the reader. We will only add that everyone was in the highest
spirits, and that many of those present had known the dead woman, and
seemed quite oblivious of the fact. There was a sound of loud laughter;
the auctioneers shouted at the top of their voices; the dealers who had
filled the benches in front of the auction table tried in vain to obtain
silence, in order to transact their business in peace. Never was there a
noisier or a more varied gathering.
I slipped quietly into the midst of this tumult, sad to think of when
one remembered that the poor creature whose goods were being sold to pay
her debts had died in the next room. Having come rather to examine than
to buy, I watched the faces of the auctioneers, noticing how they
beamed with delight whenever anything reached a price beyond their
expectations. Honest creatures, who had speculated upon this woman's
prostitution, who had gained their hundred per cent out of her, who had
plagued with their writs the last moments of her life, and who came now
after her death to gather in at once the fruits of their dishonourable
calculations and the interest on their shameful credit, How wise were
the ancients in having only one God for traders and robbers!