Chapter 3

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