“I’m sorry, sir, the auction is about to begin.” I looked up. A man in a sky-blue frock and white gloves was reaching for the book—one of the auctioneer’s assistants. If I pocketed the book and ran out of the room, I calculated, I’d never get away with it. Instead, I would end up in prison, no place to be when the Germans arrived. So I handed the book back to the assistant and found a seat. Suddenly I desired that book with my entire being, as if all the love I had felt for Madeleine was now transferred to the object before me, as if somehow Madeleine had become that book. But what chance did I stand with 873 measly francs to my name? Under normal circumstances, a manuscript of this rarity would not be cheap. Perhaps the invasion had chased away the serious collectors who would normally have dropped a small fortune, without a second thought, on such a rarity. In any case, if I were, by some stroke of luck, to snare the jewel, my destitution would be a small price to pay.

The auction began with a brief introduction by Bignon, after which he started up his consoling, monotonal patter, reminiscent of a priest’s Latinate incantations. Against this stream of rapturous descriptions and figures hopping ever upward, like goats up a mountainside, three assistants buzzed to and fro, ferrying and displaying each item in turn, keeping a meticulous record of its commercial destiny. But for all their efforts, a discernible torpor presided over the occasion. Bignon’s voice betrayed little enthusiasm. The bidding was sporadic and many of the objects were passed in.

“Now we come to the last item in the catalog, undoubtedly the drawcard of today’s proceedings,” said Bignon as one of the assistants proffered the Baudelaire manuscript as an altar boy would the Eucharist. “More than a mere curio, this is a work of genuine rarity and literary significance: a short story, previously unknown, written in Baudelaire’s own hand. The handwriting has been authenticated by the expert appraiser Monsieur Jacquenet. It appears to have been written at the end of Baudelaire’s life, in the style of Edgar Allan Poe, of whom Baudelaire was, as we know, the first French admirer and finest translator. The reserve price is two thousand francs.”