Demimonde whom Captain Rawdon Crawley lusts after in his younger days. Becky Sharp is perceived as a demimondaine before she is presented at court, and then becomes one when she travels through Europe after her husband abandons her. Possibly the most famous portrayal of the demimonde, albeit from before the word was coined, is in Verdi's opera "La traviata" (1853). The opera, in turn, was inspired by Alexandre Dumas the younger's "La Dame aux Camélias;" Marguerite Gautier, the heroine of the book and subsequent play, was based on Marie Duplessis, 1840s Paris courtesan and mistress to a number of prominent men,
A Death in the Desert Cather's reading of Robert Browning. Allusions to Alexandre Dumas, fils' "La dame aux camelias" and Lucretius's "De rerum natura" have also been found. A Death in the Desert "A Death in the Desert" is a short story by Willa Cather. It was first published in "The Scribner's" in January 1903. Everett is on a train from Holdrege, Nebraska to Cheyenne, Wyoming. He is a man that looks like his older prodigy brother Adriance--this similarity haunts him throughout the entire novel and robs him of his own personality. He will always be Adriance's brother. Moreover, Gussie Davis's song "In The Baggage