It was a day in May 1993. A magmatic, Beethovenian, irrepressible impulse invaded my entire body. A raised finger. Hammer.
A letter from Verlaine fell into my hands. A real one. Just like the ones in museums. I placed it before me, in the silence of the new morning. I caressed it with my gaze, touched it with my fingertips, breathed it in. Deeply, so deeply. I suddenly found myself drawn into the spirit of its author, enveloped. I think I was inhabiting him.
Locked up in Broussais Hospital, worms devoured my mind. I threw them onto the paper, swarming and hot. Outside, inside, everywhere, it was cold. I drowned myself in absinthe. I had just shot a man.
I opened my eyes again.
I had discovered the secret of the Little Prince. My life was turned upside down.
I opened my bookshop specializing in autographs and manuscripts. It was in prehistoric times. In the time of the book and of non-immediacy, in the time when time existed. It was in 1994.
Since 2011, it has been located on rue de Condé, between the Senate, the Odéon and the Luxembourg Gardens, opposite Beaumarchais's house, in Paul Léautaud's building, on the very spot where the Marquis de Sade was born, 30 meters from Camille and Lucile Desmoulins's house, at number 29.
Getting to know us better
Emmanuel Lorient
Expert, member of the National Company of Experts,
Member of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB)