Paul Verlaine was born in Metz in 1844 and soon loses the innocence of a dreamer boy. As a teenager, following the two postulations simultanées of Baudelaire, he feels attracted by God and the Devil at the same time. He studies in Paris, at the Lycée Bonaparte (today Condorcet) and find a job at the Hôtel de Ville, so he get time left to cultivate poetry and frequent the cafés littéraires. He make links with high rank personalities as Catulle Mendès, Sully Prudhomme, Anatole France and François Coppée.

In 1866 he writes in the Parnasse Contemporain and speak about himself as a saturnien (from Saturne) feeling the dark side of his mind. He begins to drink out of anxiety but the absinthe makes him furious, he beats his mother. He marries Mathilde Mauté in 1869 who brings him light and hope. Alas! During the siege of Paris, Verlaine goes back to his alcoholic behavior, lose his job under suspicion of political agitation, meets Rimbaud and flees with him to follow a wandering life through Belgium and England. In 1873, he is drunk and after a violent dispute he shoots two bullets at Rimbaud and is condemned to two years of prison. There he wants to continue his life with Mathilde but she has divorced. Released, he decide to practise the christian ideal

He is first professor in England, then in France. He tries then to hold a farm but is soon caught up in his old vices. He experiment misery and loneliness but his situation will improve and eventually the public will acknowledge his work. He asked for conferences and biographies but the contrast of his life will reign until the end: Verlaine dies miserably in 1896 and a crowd of writers and admirors will accompany his coffin from the Church of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont to the cemetery of the Batignolles.