ITS ACTORS, PEOPLE ONE MIGHT CROSS
These young women would be visiting boutiques.
These students from Luxembourg would be Stendhal's Lucien de Rubempré and Julien Sorel, handsome young provincials in Paris to make their way, and a lovely Asian among the foreigners that came from everywhere.
A professor of philosophy could be in a scene with café discussions.
Actors would perform their shows.
At nightfall, émigrés who had secretly returned as spies or makers of false paper money, would knock at the discreet door of « n° 50 ».
It was a distinguished gambling den, which Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe, grand-niece of the Duke of Saint-Simon and member of the former court of Versailles, created to adapt to the Revolution. She received émigrés, who might be spies or counterfeiters, by paying off the police.
Portrait de Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe by L.C. Carmontelle, 1775 / Ces dames de Sainte-Amaranthe (click and scroll down for account in French).
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A Gaming Table at Devonshire House by Thomas Rowlandson, 1791 / zoom |
Her salon must have looked like this.
While Danton protected her she was untouchable, but when he was guillotined so was she.
Les Libertines, plaisir et liberté à l'époque des Lumières
by Olivier Blanc, chapter 1, 1997
* *
Though the reality was often tragic, this movie would show the joyous place that exists today.
Dancing in the courtyard of editors and bookstores.
With a happy ending.
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