River of Ruin

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The auctioneer’s gavel came down with a stinging crack that carried across the ornate salon. “Sold for forty-seven thousand francs to bidder number 127.”

A digital board on one side of the elevated stage showed the exchange rates for each bid as they were acknowledged. The book held aloft by a white-gloved assistant standing behind the auctioneer had just been purchased for nearly seven thousand dollars.

The bid had actually been placed by an auction-house employee who fielded business from buyers either unable or unwilling to attend Paris’s premier rare book and manuscript sale. There were several such bid takers grouped together in an area like a jury box, each person equipped with telephones and an Internet-connected computer. The rest of the high-ceilinged room was given over to ranks of comfortable chairs for buyers in attendance. Derosier’s Librairie Antique was offering today’s books from a collection entitled “Patriarchs of the Industrial Age.” Tomorrow’s auction, the main event for the three-day affair, included dozens of Renaissance Bibles and a partial da Vinci manuscript expected to fetch millions of dollars.

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