Welcome to Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I Heart Radio and

Grim and Mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable. And if history is an open book, all of these

amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of the beholder. It's a phrase that we've all heard before and we've also heard the stories of how far some people in history were willing to go

for the sake of looking good but what about how far their looks might take them?

Well for one young woman beauty turned out to be a ticket to a brand new life.

That is if she could escape her dangerous reality.

Rose was born in January of 1824 in a small French village located in the picturesque region of Normandy,

but her childhood was far from idyllic.

Her father was abusive and when she was still a young girl

her mother fled home to escape him.

So Rose grew up looking out for herself, but as independent

as she was, she was still at the mercy of her father's will. When she was just 14 years old,

he sold her to a 70-year-old man who bought her to work in his shop.

It must have been scary for a teenage girl. But there was one silver lining to all this.

The old man's shop was located in Paris.

Rose was going to leave her little village behind

and head to the big city.

Once there, she was immediately put to work,

but she didn't want to be a shop girl forever.

To her surprise, working her way up in the world

didn't turn out to be hard.

...