Claude Farrer (real name Frédéric Bargon, 1876–1957) was a naval officer and French writer, author of numerous “exotic” novels and novels of sea adventures. The weakness of a woman and the strength of a man, love-game, love-whim, love-temptation and love that is “strong as death” - this is the melody of the writer’s novels and stories included in the collection. Girlfriends are “priestesses of free love”, “ladies demimonde" of the city of Toulon, they prefer Rue Sainte-Rose to all the streets of Toulon. “...Rue Sainte-Rose is the most beautiful of the streets of Miter, the most beautiful quarter of Mourillon. And Mourillon, the commercial and maritime outskirts of Toulon, follows directly behind Paris in the hierarchy of cities, as a city in which they live to love from evening to morning and think from morning to evening.” Who is Celia, the main character of the novel? Let’s not get ahead of the curve: Claude Farrer himself will tell the reader the answer to the mystery.