Gun with which Verlaine shot Rimbaud up for auction

The most famous gun in French literature, the revolver with which the poet Paul Verlaine tried to kill his lover, Arthur Rimbaud, is going under the hammer, Christie’s has said.

Verlaine bought the 7mm six-shooter in Brussels on the morning of 10 July 1873, determined to put an end to a torrid two-year affair with his teenage lover.

The 29-year-old poet had abandoned his young wife and child to be with Rimbaud, who would later become a symbol of rebellious youth.

However, after an opium- and absinthe-soaked stay in London that would inspire Rimbaud’s Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell), Verlaine wanted to go back to his wife. He fled to the Belgian capital to get away from Rimbaud, only for the younger man to follow him.

It was in a hotel room there at two in the afternoon where, after the lovers had rowed, cried and got drunk – according to Rimbaud – that the suicidal Verlaine raised the pistol.

“Here’s how I will teach you how to leave!” he shouted, before firing twice at Rimbaud. One bullet hit him in the wrist, while the other bullet struck the wall and ricocheted into the chimney.

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But, having been bandaged up in hospital, Rimbaud again begged the author of Poèmes saturniens not to leave him. Verlaine, who was to be dogged by drink and drug addiction all his life, pulled out the revolver again and threatened him with it in the street.

Verlaine was arrested by a passing policeman and sentenced to two years in jail with hard labour, where – much to Rimbaud’s fury – he converted to Catholicism.

In prison, he wrote 32 poems that would later appear in some of his best-known collections: Sagesse, Jadis et Naguère and Invectives.

Rimbaud, whose legacy helped inspire the 60s counter-culture movement and rock rebels such as Jim Morrison of the Doors, moved back in with his domineering mother and finished Une Saison en Enfer.

The gun was confiscated and later fell into the hands of a private owner, Christie’s said. It estimates the gun could make up to €60,000 (£54,000) at an auction in Paris on 30 November.