Monsieur de Phocas, Astarté: Roman

A narrator receives an unexpected visit from an exquisitely dressed, pallid young man who sifts through his papers and awakens memories of a prior meeting in a jeweler's atelier. Those recollections reveal a pattern of eccentric commissions, seasonal disappearances to distant places, and a secret collection of precious stones and cameos. The prose traces the subject's withdrawal from society and the whispering speculation that surrounds him, exploring themes of aesthetic excess, melancholy, and the construction of a mysterious, self-fashioned identity centered on jewels, travel, and deliberate isolation.