g the reason of this astonishment and
admiration, for, having begun to examine things a little carefully, I
discovered without difficulty that I was in the house of a kept woman.
Now, if there is one thing which women in society would like to see (and
there were society women there), it is the home of those women whose
carriages splash their own carriages day by day, who, like them, side by
side with them, have their boxes at the Opera and at the Italiens,
and who parade in Paris the opulent insolence of their beauty, their
diamonds, and their scandal.

This one was dead, so the most virtuous of women could enter even her
bedroom. Death had purified the air of this abode of splendid foulness,
and if more excuse were needed, they had the excuse that they had merely
come to a sale, they knew not whose. They had read the placards, they
wished to see what the placards had announced, and to make their choice
beforehand. What could be more natural? Yet, all the same, in the midst
of all these beautiful things, they could not help looking about for
some traces of this courtesan's life, of which they had heard, no doubt,
strange enough stories.

Unfortunately the mystery had vanished with the goddess, and, for
all their endeavours, they discovered only what was on sale since
the owner's decease, and nothing of what had been on sale during her
lifetime. For the rest, there were plenty of things worth buying. The
furniture was superb; there were rosewood and buhl cabinets and tables,
Sevres and Chinese vases, Saxe statuettes, satin, velvet, lace; there
was nothing lacking.

I sauntered through the rooms, following the inquisitive ladies of
distinction. They entered a room with Persian hangings, and I was just
going to enter in turn, when they came out again almost immediately,
smiling, and as if ashamed of their own curiosity. I was all the more
eager to see the room. It was the dressing-room, laid out with all the
articles of toilet, in which the dead woman's extravagance seemed to be
seen at its height.

On a large table against the wall, a table three feet in width and six
in length, glittered all the treasures of Aucoc and Odiot. It was a
magnificent collection, and there was not one of those thousand little
things so necessary to the toilet of a woman of the kind which was not
in gold or silver. Such a collection could only have been got together
little by little, and the same lover had certainly not begun and ended
it.