A young man of good family falls in love with the most expensive courtesan in Paris. Her price is not the obstacle; his father is, and so is her illness. Dumas fils wrote it at twenty-three out of his own affair, and every tragic romance since has been working from his blueprint. Paintings of the demimonde - opera boxes, boudoirs, carriages strewn with camellias. The Gilded Library decoration takes the flower itself, an opera glass and a bundle of letters.