The Auction (Chapters 1–6)

On the 12th of March 1847, I saw in the rue Laffitte a large yellow poster announcing a sale of furniture and curiosities. The sale was to take place after the death of the owner. The owner's name was not given; but the sale was to be held at number 9, rue d'Antin, and on the day before, the public could visit the apartment.

I went. I found a crowd of fashionable ladies there — duchesses, great ladies of good society — who had come out of curiosity to see the rooms of a woman they would never have spoken to while she lived: for the owner was a kept woman, one of the most famous courtesans in Paris, Marguerite Gautier. She was dead, very young, of consumption. Everything was for sale, to pay her creditors: her silk dresses, her cashmere shawls, her jewels, her furniture of rosewood and Boule, her silver toilet set with its monograms and the coats of arms of the men who had given it to her.

I had seen her often, in the theatres and in the Champs-Élysées, driving in a little blue coupé drawn by two bay horses: a tall, very slender girl, with an oval face, black eyes under arched brows, a little straight nose, a delicate mouth, and a complexion like the bloom on a peach; she was always dressed with perfect simplicity and elegance. And she always carried a bouquet of camellias. For twenty-five days of the month the camellias were white, and for five they were red; no one ever knew the reason for the change of colour, and the florist, Madame Barjon, had ended by calling her "the Lady of the Camellias," and the name had stuck.

I walked through her rooms. Everything spoke of luxury and of the men who had paid for it. In her dressing room, on a great table, were laid out all the instruments of her beauty, in gold and silver, the presents of a whole succession of lovers; and I thought how many nights, how many lies, how many little deaths of the heart they represented. I had not known her; I had only seen her pass. And yet I found myself sad, as one is sad at the death of something beautiful, and angry at the curious ladies who walked through her rooms as if through a zoo.

At the auction, the next day, among the books, was a beautifully bound copy of Manon Lescaut, the old novel of a young man who gives up everything for a beautiful, unfaithful woman, and follows her to her death in the deserts of America. I bought it, for a hundred francs, to the surprise of everyone, for it was worth ten. On the first page, in an elegant hand, was written: Manon to Marguerite. Humility. It was signed: Armand Duval.

A few days later a young man came to my door: tall, pale, fair, in travelling clothes, dusty, worn with grief. It was Armand Duval. He had been away, travelling, and had come back to Paris too late — he had learned of Marguerite's death only on his return; he had missed the sale. He wanted the book. I gave it to him; he wept over it. He showed me a letter from Marguerite, which she had written to him before she died. Then he went away; and I did not see him for some time.

I met him again at Marguerite's grave, at the cemetery of Montmartre, covered with white camellias. He was ill. He wanted only one thing, he told me: to see her once more. She had been buried in a temporary grave, and he had obtained, with great difficulty, permission to have her moved to a permanent one; and he wanted to be present when the coffin was opened. I went with him. They opened the grave. It was a terrible thing to see; I will not describe it. Armand looked; he gave a great cry; and he fell into a fever that lasted for weeks.

When he was better, he sent for me; and one evening, in his room, with the copy of Manon Lescaut on the table beside him, he told me the story of his love.