Author’s Note
138 Words
Author’s NoteThe background to this story of the Symbolists and the Left Bank of Paris in 1893 is correct.
The descriptions of the Soleil d’Or, Paul Verlaine, Joseph Péladan and Léo Taxil are all accurate. The Marquis de Guaita held strange séances and undermined his health by keeping himself awake night after night with morphine and hashish. He practised astral projection and believed himself haunted by larvae (imperfect apparitions of souls). He became half crazed and died at the age of thirty-six.
La Goulue fell on hard times. She became a wrestler, a lion-tamer and a servant in a brothel before ending up half rag-picker, half beggar. She lived in a wretched caravan and the only relic of her success was a piece of lace from her exciting Can-Can petticoats. She made it into a curtain ‘which was grey with dust’. She died in 1929.
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