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neighbourhood

Parc Monceau

The fashionable neighbourhood surrounding Parc Monceau in western Paris, the world of La Curée. Here Aristide Saccard builds his extravagant Second Empire mansion — a monument to speculation, half-finished, financed by debt. It is in this milieu of hasty wealth, Haussmann-carved boulevards, and social performance that Saccard's scheme of buying and reselling demolition sites reaches its dizzying peak. The hot-house attached to the mansion, steamy and tropical, is where Renée and Maxime conduct their reckless affair among the exotic plants.