From The Saleroom

In April 1931, Stefan Zweig shadows a pickpocket across Paris and loses him in the throng of the Hôtel Drouot — that 'vast fair of human vanities and necessities' where, he writes, everything 'is about to become money': Houdon marbles beside cigarette cases, a Van Dyck beside grimy daubs, Beethoven sonatas beside broken stoves. Under the ivory hammer of an auctioneer who conducts the room 'like an orchestra,' an imperial Chinese vase climbs to two hundred and sixty thousand francs — while the thief has already chosen his mark. Révélation inattendue d'un métier remains the strangest love letter ever written to the saleroom: the theatre where objects, and the people drawn to them, always end by giving themselves away. This is our chronicle of that floor.