This essay analyses Carl J. Burckhardt’s ‘Ein Vormittag beim Buchhändler’ (1943), which tells the story of a gathering in Paris of the poet Rilke, the historian Burckhardt, the Paris bookseller Augustin, and the librarian Lucien Herr. Up to the present, Burckhardt’s finely told and densely woven narration has been regarded as a factual story – albeit its novellalike structure and its wealth of literary symbols. By comparing Rilke’s and Burckhardt’s letters, my interpretation focuses on the fictional aspects of the text, which is – as I argue – rather a novella on art and artists than a story from ‘real life’