The gun of Paul Verlain has been sold at the auction for 434.5 euro

The gun that hardly altered the course of literature was sold for the amount that was seven times more expensive than it used to be assessed, as it is reported by organizers of auction. As it is well-known, Paul Verlain purchased this gun in Brussels on the 10-th of July 1873 intending to settle accounts with his loving partner. Verlain being at that moment 29 years old left his beloved wife and a little kid so as to live together with Rimbaud. However, after the extreme addiction towards opium and absinthe that, by the way, inspired Rimbaud for the creation of a poem ‘A season in Hell’, Verlain decided to come back to the family he had left before. The lovers had a blazing row, and Verlain took a gun to shot to Rimbaud who did not want to leave Verlain. It was said that before the shot Verlain shouted: ‘Now I will teach you how to leave’. The bullet turned to appear in the wrist but Verlain being scared of the possible consequences sent his fellow to the hospital.

Nevertheless, even being located in the hospital, Rimbaud asked Verlain not to leave him alone. Concerning the latest, being completely drunk, he held the weapon and if it had not been for the policeman passing nearby this minute could have become the fatal one for Rimbaud. The police arrested excessively boisterous poet and set him behind the bars for two years.

As for the gun that hardly played a death-like role in this story, it passed from hand to hand until it did not appear in the house of a Belgian bailiff Jacques Ruth who had been saving this weapon for twenty years not being aware of its historical value. However, suddenly Jacques saw a similar model in Hollywood film of 1995 ‘The Total Eclipse’ depicting loving affair of two famous poets. The episodes seen made Jacques Ruth arrange an expertise that approved the fact that it is the same weapon from which Verlain shot.