Camille (La Dame aux Camilias)

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!