The cabriolet drove in through the gates of a huge hôtel in the Faubourg St. Germain. The courtyard was crowded with people--and such people! Jews, porters, female furniture dealers with heavy earrings, silken skirts, and ungloved, unwashed hands--all the sharks that ruin attracts; and in the portico, on the steps, on the very gravel of the drive, furniture, crystal chandeliers, tables, mirrors, lying like the débris left by the wave of misfortune. It was as if one were looking at a lee shore the morning after the wreck of some palatial ship: cabin-furniture, stores, the sailor's sea-chest and the passengers' baggage, tossed up on the sands in horrible incongruity, and speaking louder than a thousand trumpets of the fury of the storm. There was a sale in progress at the Hôtel Feliciani. I knew nothing of sales, I knew nothing of finance, speculation, or commercial ruin, but I knew that what I saw was disaster. Getting out of the cabriolet, and telling the driver to wait for me, I went up the steps and mixed with the throng in the hall. I wanted to find the Felicianis, and some instinct told me they were not here; also, that it was useless to ask any of these people their whereabouts. I looked about me for someone in authority; and, as I looked, a voice from the large salon adjoining the hall came: "Thirty thousand francs! Thirty thousand francs! Any advance on thirty thousand francs? Gone!" Then followed the blow of a little hammer. They were selling the pictures. I turned to the doorway of the great salon and squeezed my way in. The place was filled with people--all Paris was there. Men who had shaken the Count Feliciani by the hand, women who had kissed the Countess on the cheek, men and women of the highest nobility, of the greatest intelligence--très propre, to use the words of the old fool in De Morny's ante-chamber--were here, battening on the sight, and trying to snatch bargains from the ruin of their one-time friends. The Felicianis, as I afterwards learned, all but beggared, had been cast adrift, mother and daughter, by society; cast out like lepers from the pure precincts of the Court circle and the buckramed salons of the Royalist clique. M. Hamard, the auctioneer, on his estrade, before his desk, a man in steel spectacles, the living image of the late unlamented Procurator of the Holy Synod, was clearing his throat before offering the next lot, a Gerard Dow, eighteen inches by twelve. As the bidding leaped up by a thousand francs at a time, I edged my way through the throng closer and closer to the auctioneer, treading on dainty toes, wedging myself in between whispering acquaintances, regardless of grumbles and muttered imprecations, till I was right beside the estrade and within plucking distance of the auctioneer's coat. "Sixty-five thousand francs!" cried M. Hamard. "This priceless Gerard Dow--sixty-five thousand francs. Any advance on sixty-five thousand francs? Gone! Well, what is it, little boy?"