 La Dame au Camélia. Or Camille, by Alexandre Dumas Fies. Read by Nicholas Bolton, for Naxos audiobooks. Chapter 1. In my opinion it is impossible to create characters until one has spent a long time in studying people, as it is impossible to speak a language until it has been properly mastered. Not being old enough to invent, I content myself with narrating, and I beg the reader to believe the truth of a story in which all the characters, with the exception of the heroine, are still alive. I witnesses for the greater part of the facts which I have collected are to be found in Paris, and I might call upon them to confirm me if my testimony is not enough. And thanks to a particular circumstance I alone can write these things, for I alone am able to give the final details, without which it would have been impossible to make the story at once interesting and complete. This is how these details came to my knowledge. On the 12th of March, 1847, I saw in the Rue la Fite a great yellow placard announcing a sale of furniture and curiosities. The sale was to take place on the count of the death of the owner. The owner's name was not mentioned, but the sale was to be held at 9 rue d'Antin on the 16th between 12 and 5. The placard further announced that the rooms and furniture could be viewed on the 13th and 14th. I have always been very fond of curiosities, and I made up my mind not to miss the occasion, if not of buying some, at all events of seeing them. Next day I called at 9 rue d'Antin. It was early in the day, and yet there were already a number of visitors, both men and women, and the women, though they were dressed in cashmere and velvet and had their carriages waiting for them at the door, gazed with astonishment and admiration at the luxury which they saw before them. I was not long in discovering the reason for 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 that 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 the Teatre Italien, 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 could say 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. Sample complete. Ready to continue?