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Camille (La Dame aux Camilias)
by Alexandre Dumas, fils
January, 1999 [Etext #1608]
Project Gutenberg Etext of Camille[La Dame aux Camilias] by Dumas
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CAMILLE (LA DAME AUX CAMILIAS)
by ALEXANDRE DUMAS fils
Chapter I
In my opinion, it is impossible to create characters until one
has spent a long time in studying men, as it is impossible to
speak a language until it has been seriously acquired. Not being
old enough to invent, I content myself with narrating, and I beg
the reader to assure himself of the truth of a story in which all
the characters, with the exception of the heroine, are still
alive. Eye-witnesses of the greater part of the facts which I
have collected are to be found in Paris, and I might call upon
them to confirm me if my testimony is not enough. And, thanks to
a particular circumstance, I alone can write these things, for I
alone am able to give the final details, without which it would
have been impossible to make the story at once interesting and
complete.
This is how these details came to my knowledge. On the 12th of
March, 1847, I saw in the Rue Lafitte a great yellow placard
announcing a sale of furniture and curiosities. The sale was to
take place on account of the death of the owner. The owner's name
was not mentioned, but the sale was to be held at 9, Rue d'Antin,
on the 16th, from 12 to 5. The placard further announced that the
rooms and furniture could be seen on the 13th and 14th.
I have always been very fond of curiosities, and I made up my
mind not to miss the occasion, if not of buying some, at all
events of seeing them. Next day I called at 9, Rue d'Antin.
It was early in the day, and yet there were already a number of
visitors, both men and women, and the women, though they were
dressed in cashmere and velvet, and had their carriages waiting
for them at the door, gazed with astonishment and admiration at
the luxury which they saw before them.
I was not long in discovering the reason of this astonishment and
admiration, for, having begun to examine things a little
carefully, I discovered without difficulty that I was in the
house of a kept woman. Now, if there is one thing which women in
society would like to see (and there were society women there),
it is the home of those women whose carriages splash their own
carriages day by day, who, like them, side by side with them,
have their boxes at the Opera and at the Italiens, and who parade
in Paris the opulent insolence of their beauty, their diamonds,
and their scandal.
This one was dead, so the most virtuous of women could enter even
her bedroom. Death had purified the air of this abode of splendid
foulness, and if more excuse were needed, they had the excuse
that they had merely come to a sale, they knew not whose. They
had read the placards, they wished to see what the placards had
announced, and to make their choice beforehand. What could be
more natural? Yet, all the same, in the midst of all these
beautiful things, they could not help looking about for some
traces of this courtesan's life, of which they had heard, no
doubt, strange enough stories.
Unfortunately the mystery had vanished with the goddess, and, for
all their endeavours, they discovered only what was on sale since
the owner's decease, and nothing of what had been on sale during
her lifetime. For the rest, there were plenty of things worth
buying. The furniture was superb; there were rosewood and buhl
cabinets and tables, Sevres and Chinese vases, Saxe statuettes,
satin, velvet, lace; there was nothing lacking.
I sauntered through the rooms, following the inquisitive ladies
of distinction. They entered a room with Persian hangings, and I
was just going to enter in turn, when they came out again almost
immediately, smiling, and as if ashamed of their own curiosity. I
was all the more eager to see the room. It was the dressing-room,
laid out with all the articles of toilet, in which the dead
woman's extravagance seemed to be seen at its height.
On a large table against the wall, a table three feet in width
and six in length, glittered all the treasures of Aucoc and
Odiot. It was a magnificent collection, and there was not one of
those thousand little things so necessary to the toilet of a
woman of the kind which was not in gold or silver. Such a
collection could only have been got together little by little,
and the same lover had certainly not begun and ended it.
Not being shocked at the sight of a kept woman's dressing-room, I
amused myself with examining every detail, and I discovered that
these magnificently chiselled objects bore different initials and
different coronets. I looked at one after another, each recalling
a separate shame, and I said that God had been merciful to the
poor child, in not having left her to pay the ordinary penalty,
but rather to die in the midst of her beauty and luxury, before
the coming of old age, the courtesan's first death.
Is there anything sadder in the world than the old age of vice,
especially in woman? She preserves no dignity, she inspires no
interest. The everlasting repentance, not of the evil ways
followed, but of the plans that have miscarried, the money that
has been spent in vain, is as saddening a thing as one can well
meet with. I knew an aged woman who had once been "gay," whose
only link with the past was a daughter almost as beautiful as she
herself had been. This poor creature to whom her mother had never
said, "You are my child," except to bid her nourish her old age
as she herself had nourished her youth, was called Louise, and,
being obedient to her mother, she abandoned herself without
volition, without passion, without pleasure, as she would have
worked at any other profession that might have been taught her.
The constant sight of dissipation, precocious dissipation, in
addition to her constant sickly state, had extinguished in her
mind all the knowledge of good and evil that God had perhaps
given her, but that no one had ever thought of developing. I
shall always remember her, as she passed along the boulevards
almost every day at the same hour, accompanied by her mother as
assiduously as a real mother might have accompanied her daughter.
I was very young then, and ready to accept for myself the easy
morality of the age. I remember, however, the contempt and
disgust which awoke in me at the sight of this scandalous
chaperoning. Her face, too, was inexpressibly virginal in its
expression of innocence and of melancholy suffering. She was like
a figure of Resignation.
One day the girl's face was transfigured. In the midst of all the
debauches mapped out by her mother, it seemed to her as if God
had left over for her one happiness. And why indeed should God,
who had made her without strength, have left her without
consolation, under the sorrowful burden of her life? One day,
then, she realized that she was to have a child, and all that
remained to her of chastity leaped for joy. The soul has strange
refuges. Louise ran to tell the good news to her mother. It is a
shameful thing to speak of, but we are not telling tales of
pleasant sins; we are telling of true facts, which it would be
better, no doubt, to pass over in silence, if we did not believe
that it is needful from time to time to reveal the martyrdom of
those who are condemned without bearing, scorned without judging;
shameful it is, but this mother answered the daughter that they
had already scarce enough for two, and would certainly not have
enough for three; that such children are useless, and a lying-in
is so much time lost.
Next day a midwife, of whom all we will say is that she was a
friend of the mother, visited Louise, who remained in bed for a
few days, and then got up paler and feebler than before.
Three months afterward a man took pity on her and tried to heal
her, morally and physically; but the last shock had been too
violent, and Louise died of it. The mother still lives; how? God
knows.
This story returned to my mind while I looked at the silver
toilet things, and a certain space of time must have elapsed
during these reflections, for no one was left in the room but
myself and an attendant, who, standing near the door, was
carefully watching me to see that I did not pocket anything.
I went up to the man, to whom I was causing so much anxiety.
"Sir," I said, "can you tell me the name of the person who
formerly lived here?"
"Mademoiselle Marguerite Gautier."
I knew her by name and by sight.
"What!" I said to the attendant; "Marguerite Gautier is dead?"
"Yes, sir."
"When did she die?"
"Three weeks ago, I believe."
"And why are the rooms on view?"
"The creditors believe that it will send up the prices. People
can see beforehand the effect of the things; you see that induces
them to buy."
"She was in debt, then?"
"To any extent, sir."
"But the sale will cover it?"
"And more too."
"Who will get what remains over?"
"Her family."
"She had a family?"
"It seems so."
"Thanks."
The attendant, reassured as to my intentions, touched his hat,
and I went out.
"Poor girl!" I said to myself as I returned home; "she must have
had a sad death, for, in her world, one has friends only when one
is perfectly well." And in spite of myself I began to feel
melancholy over the fate of Marguerite Gautier.
It will seem absurd to many people, but I have an unbounded
sympathy for women of this kind, and I do not think it necessary
to apologize for such sympathy.
One day, as I was going to the Prefecture for a passport, I saw
in one of the neighbouring streets a poor girl who was being
marched along by two policemen. I do not know what was the
matter. All I know is that she was weeping bitterly as she kissed
an infant only a few months old, from whom her arrest was to
separate her. Since that day I have never dared to despise a
woman at first sight.
Chapter 2
The sale was to take place on the 16th. A day's interval had been
left between the visiting days and the sale, in order to give
time for taking down the hangings, curtains, etc. I had just
returned from abroad. It was natural that I had not heard of
Marguerite's death among the pieces of news which one's friends
always tell on returning after an absence. Marguerite was a
pretty woman; but though the life of such women makes sensation
enough, their death makes very little. They are suns which set as
they rose, unobserved. Their death, when they die young, is heard
of by all their lovers at the same moment, for in Paris almost
all the lovers of a well-known woman are friends. A few
recollections are exchanged, and everybody's life goes on as if
the incident had never occurred, without so much as a tear.
Nowadays, at twenty-five, tears have become so rare a thing that
they are not to be squandered indiscriminately. It is the most
that can be expected if the parents who pay for being wept over
are wept over in return for the price they pay.
As for me, though my initials did not occur on any of
Marguerite's belongings, that instinctive indulgence, that
natural pity that I have already confessed, set me thinking over
her death, more perhaps than it was worth thinking over. I
remembered having often met Marguerite in the Bois, where she
went regularly every day in a little blue coupe drawn by two
magnificent bays, and I had noticed in her a distinction quite
apart from other women of her kind, a distinction which was
enhanced by a really exceptional beauty.
These unfortunate creatures whenever they go out are always
accompanied by somebody or other. As no man cares to make himself
conspicuous by being seen in their company, and as they are
afraid of solitude, they take with them either those who are not
well enough off to have a carriage, or one or another of those
elegant, ancient ladies, whose elegance is a little inexplicable,
and to whom one can always go for information in regard to the
women whom they accompany.
In Marguerite's case it was quite different. She was always alone
when she drove in the Champs-Elysees, lying back in her carriage
as much as possible, dressed in furs in winter, and in summer
wearing very simple dresses; and though she often passed people
whom she knew, her smile, when she chose to smile, was seen only
by them, and a duchess might have smiled in just such a manner.
She did not drive to and fro like the others, from the Rond-Point
to the end of the Champs-Elysees. She drove straight to the Bois.
There she left her carriage, walked for an hour, returned to her
carriage, and drove rapidly home.
All these circumstances which I had so often witnessed came back
to my memory, and I regretted her death as one might regret the
destruction of a beautiful work of art.
It was impossible to see more charm in beauty than in that of
Marguerite. Excessively tall and thin, she had in the fullest
degree the art of repairing this oversight of Nature by the mere
arrangement of the things she wore. Her cashmere reached to the
ground, and showed on each side the large flounces of a silk
dress, and the heavy muff which she held pressed against her
bosom was surrounded by such cunningly arranged folds that the
eye, however exacting, could find no fault with the contour of
the lines. Her head, a marvel, was the object of the most
coquettish care. It was small, and her mother, as Musset would
say, seemed to have made it so in order to make it with care.
Set, in an oval of indescribable grace, two black eyes,
surmounted by eyebrows of so pure a curve that it seemed as if
painted; veil these eyes with lovely lashes, which, when drooped,
cast their shadow on the rosy hue of the cheeks; trace a
delicate, straight nose, the nostrils a little open, in an ardent
aspiration toward the life of the senses; design a regular mouth,
with lips parted graciously over teeth as white as milk; colour
the skin with the down of a peach that no hand has touched, and
you will have the general aspect of that charming countenance.
The hair, black as jet, waving naturally or not, was parted on
the forehead in two large folds and draped back over the head,
leaving in sight just the tip of the ears, in which there
glittered two diamonds, worth four to five thousand francs each.
How it was that her ardent life had left on Marguerite's face the
virginal, almost childlike expression, which characterized it, is
a problem which we can but state, without attempting to solve it.
Marguerite had a marvellous portrait of herself, by Vidal, the
only man whose pencil could do her justice. I had this portrait
by me for a few days after her death, and the likeness was so
astonishing that it has helped to refresh my memory in regard to
some points which I might not otherwise have remembered.
Some among the details of this chapter did not reach me until
later, but I write them here so as not to be obliged to return to
them when the story itself has begun.
Marguerite was always present at every first night, and passed
every evening either at the theatre or the ball. Whenever there
was a new piece she was certain to be seen, and she invariably
had three things with her on the ledge of her ground-floor box:
her opera-glass, a bag of sweets, and a bouquet of camellias.
For twenty-five days of the month the camellias were white, and
for five they were red; no one ever knew the reason of this
change of colour, which I mention though I can not explain it; it
was noticed both by her friends and by the habitue's of the
theatres to which she most often went. She was never seen with
any flowers but camellias. At the florist's, Madame Barjon's, she
had come to be called "the Lady of the Camellias," and the name
stuck to her.
Like all those who move in a certain set in Paris, I knew that
Marguerite had lived with some of the most fashionable young men
in society, that she spoke of it openly, and that they themselves
boasted of it; so that all seemed equally pleased with one
another. Nevertheless, for about three years, after a visit to
Bagnees, she was said to be living with an old duke, a foreigner,
enormously rich, who had tried to remove her as far as possible
from her former life, and, as it seemed, entirely to her own
satisfaction.
This is what I was told on the subject. In the spring of 1847
Marguerite was so ill that the doctors ordered her to take the
waters, and she went to Bagneres. Among the invalids was the
daughter of this duke; she was not only suffering from the same
complaint, but she was so like Marguerite in appearance that they
might have been taken for sisters; the young duchess was in the
last stage of consumption, and a few days after Marguerite's
arrival she died. One morning, the duke, who had remained at
Bagneres to be near the soil that had buried a part of his heart,
caught sight of Marguerite at a turn of the road. He seemed to
see the shadow of his child, and going up to her, he took her
hands, embraced and wept over her, and without even asking her
who she was, begged her to let him love in her the living image
of his dead child. Marguerite, alone at Bagneres with her maid,
and not being in any fear of compromising herself, granted the
duke's request. Some people who knew her, happening to be at
Bagneres, took upon themselves to explain Mademoiselle Gautier's
true position to the duke. It was a blow to the old man, for the
resemblance with his daughter was ended in one direction, but it
was too late. She had become a necessity to his heart, his only
pretext, his only excuse, for living. He made no reproaches, he
had indeed no right to do so, but he asked her if she felt
herself capable of changing her mode of life, offering her in
return for the sacrifice every compensation that she could
desire. She consented.
It must be said that Marguerite was just then very ill. The past
seemed to her sensitive nature as if it were one of the main
causes of her illness, and a sort of superstition led her to hope
that God would restore to her both health and beauty in return
for her repentance and conversion. By the end of the summer, the
waters, sleep, the natural fatigue of long walks, had indeed more
or less restored her health. The duke accompanied her to Paris,
where he continued to see her as he had done at Bagneres.
This liaison, whose motive and origin were quite unknown, caused
a great sensation, for the duke, already known for his immense
fortune, now became known for his prodigality. All this was set
down to the debauchery of a rich old man, and everything was
believed except the truth. The father's sentiment for Marguerite
had, in truth, so pure a cause that anything but a communion of
hearts would have seemed to him a kind of incest, and he had
never spoken to her a word which his daughter might not have
heard.
Far be it from me to make out our heroine to be anything but what
she was. As long as she remained at Bagneres, the promise she had
made to the duke had not been hard to keep, and she had kept it;
but, once back in Paris, it seemed to her, accustomed to a life
of dissipation, of balls, of orgies, as if the solitude, only
interrupted by the duke's stated visits, would kill her with
boredom, and the hot breath of her old life came back across her
head and heart.
We must add that Marguerite had returned more beautiful than she
had ever been; she was but twenty, and her malady, sleeping but
not subdued, continued to give her those feverish desires which
are almost always the result of diseases of the chest.
It was a great grief to the duke when his friends, always on the
lookout for some scandal on the part of the woman with whom, it
seemed to them, he was compromising himself, came to tell him,
indeed to prove to him, that at times when she was sure of not
seeing him she received other visits, and that these visits were
often prolonged till the following day. On being questioned,
Marguerite admitted everything to the duke, and advised him,
without arriere-pensee, to concern himself with her no longer,
for she felt incapable of carrying out what she had undertaken,
and she did not wish to go on accepting benefits from a man whom
she was deceiving. The duke did not return for a week; it was all
he could do, and on the eighth day he came to beg Marguerite to
let him still visit her, promising that he would take her as she
was, so long as he might see her, and swearing that he would
never utter a reproach against her, not though he were to die of
it.
This, then, was the state of things three months after
Marguerite's return; that is to say, in November or December,
1842.
Chapter 3
At one o'clock on the 16th I went to the Rue d'Antin. The voice
of the auctioneer could be heard from the outer door. The rooms
were crowded with people. There were all the celebrities of the
most elegant impropriety, furtively examined by certain great
ladies who had again seized the opportunity of the sale in order
to be able to see, close at hand, women whom they might never
have another occasion of meeting, and whom they envied perhaps in
secret for their easy pleasures. The Duchess of F. elbowed Mlle.
A., one of the most melancholy examples of our modern courtesan;
the Marquis de T. hesitated over a piece of furniture the price
of which was being run high by Mme. D., the most elegant and
famous adulteress of our time; the Duke of Y., who in Madrid is
supposed to be ruining himself in Paris, and in Paris to be
ruining himself in Madrid, and who, as a matter of fact, never
even reaches the limit of his income, talked with Mme. M., one of
our wittiest story-tellers, who from time to time writes what she
says and signs what she writes, while at the same time he
exchanged confidential glances with Mme. de N., a fair ornament
of the Champs-Elysees, almost always dressed in pink or blue, and
driving two big black horses which Tony had sold her for 10,000
francs, and for which she had paid, after her fashion; finally,
Mlle. R., who makes by her mere talent twice what the women of
the world make by their dot and three times as much as the others
make by their amours, had come, in spite of the cold, to make
some purchases, and was not the least looked at among the crowd.
We might cite the initials of many more of those who found
themselves, not without some mutual surprise, side by side in one
room. But we fear to weary the reader. We will only add that
everyone was in the highest spirits, and that many of those
present had known the dead woman, and seemed quite oblivious of
the fact. There was a sound of loud laughter; the auctioneers
shouted at the top of their voices; the dealers who had filled
the benches in front of the auction table tried in vain to obtain
silence, in order to transact their business in peace. Never was
there a noisier or a more varied gathering.
I slipped quietly into the midst of this tumult, sad to think of
when one remembered that the poor creature whose goods were being
sold to pay her debts had died in the next room. Having come
rather to examine than to buy, I watched the faces of the
auctioneers, noticing how they beamed with delight whenever
anything reached a price beyond their expectations. Honest
creatures, who had speculated upon this woman's prostitution, who
had gained their hundred per cent out of her, who had plagued
with their writs the last moments of her life, and who came now
after her death to gather in at once the fruits of their
dishonourable calculations and the interest on their shameful
credit, How wise were the ancients in having only one God for
traders and robbers!
Dresses, cashmeres, jewels, were sold with incredible rapidity.
There was nothing that I cared for, and I still waited. All at
once I heard: "A volume, beautifully bound, gilt-edged, entitled
Manon Lescaut. There is something written on the first page. Ten
francs."
"Twelve," said a voice after a longish silence.
"Fifteen," I said.
Why? I did not know. Doubtless for the something written.
"Fifteen," repeated the auctioneer.
"Thirty," said the first bidder in a tone which seemed to defy
further competition.
It had now become a struggle. "Thirty-five," I cried in the same
tone.
"Forty."
"Fifty."
"Sixty."
"A hundred."
If I had wished to make a sensation I should certainly have
succeeded, for a profound silence had ensued, and people gazed at
me as if to see what sort of a person it was, who seemed to be so
determined to possess the volume.
The accent which I had given to my last word seemed to convince
my adversary; he preferred to abandon a conflict which could only
have resulted in making me pay ten times its price for the
volume, and, bowing, he said very gracefully, though indeed a
little late:
"I give way, sir."
Nothing more being offered, the book was assigned to me.
As I was afraid of some new fit of obstinacy, which my amour
propre might have sustained somewhat better than my purse, I
wrote down my name, had the book put on one side, and went out. I
must have given considerable food for reflection to the witnesses
of this scene, who would nodoubt ask themselves what my purpose
could have been in paying a hundred francs for a book which I
could have had anywhere for ten, or, at the outside, fifteen.
An hour after, I sent for my purchase. On the first page was
written in ink, in an elegant hand, an inscription on the part of
the giver. It consisted of these words:
Manon to Marguerite.
Humility.
It was signed Armand Duval.
What was the meaning of the word Humility? Was Manon to recognise
in Marguerite, in the opinion of M. Armand Duval, her superior in
vice or in affection? The second interpretation seemed the more
probable, for the first would have been an impertinent piece of
plain speaking which Marguerite, whatever her opinion of herself,
would never have accepted.
I went out again, and thought no more of the book until at night,
when I was going to bed.
Manon Lescaut is a touching story. I know every detail of it, and
yet whenever I come across the volume the same sympathy always
draws me to it; I open it, and for the hundredth time I live over
again with the heroine of the Abbe Prevost. Now this heroine is
so true to life that I feel as if I had known her; and thus the
sort of comparison between her and Marguerite gave me an unusual
inclination to read it, and my indulgence passed into pity,
almost into a kind of love for the poor girl to whom I owed the
volume. Manon died in the desert, it is true, but in the arms of
the man who loved her with the whole energy of his soul; who,
when she was dead, dug a grave for her, and watered it with his
tears, and buried his heart in it; while Marguerite, a sinner
like Manon, and perhaps converted like her, had died in a
sumptuous bed (it seemed, after what I had seen, the bed of her
past), but in that desert of the heart, a more barren, a vaster,
a more pitiless desert than that in which Manon had found her
last resting-place.
Marguerite, in fact, as I had found from some friends who knew of
the last circumstances of her life, had not a single real friend
by her bedside during the two months of her long and painful
agony.
Then from Manon and Marguerite my mind wandered to those whom I
knew, and whom I saw singing along the way which led to just such
another death. Poor souls! if it is not right to love them, is it
not well to pity them? You pity the blind man who has never seen
the daylight, the deaf who has never heard the harmonies of
nature, the dumb who has never found a voice for his soul, and,
under a false cloak of shame, you will not pity this blindness of
heart, this deafness of soul, this dumbness of conscience, which
sets the poor afflicted creature beside herself and makes her, in
spite of herself, incapable of seeing what is good, of bearing
the Lord, and of speaking the pure language of love and faith.
Hugo has written Marion Delorme, Musset has written Bernerette,
Alexandre Dumas has written Fernande, the thinkers and poets of
all time have brought to the courtesan the offering of their
pity, and at times a great man has rehabilitated them with his
love and even with his name. If I insist on this point, it is
because many among those who have begun to read me will be ready
to throw down a book in which they will fear to find an apology
for vice and prostitution; and the author's age will do
something, no doubt, to increase this fear. Let me undeceive
those who think thus, and let them go on reading, if nothing but
such a fear hinders them.
I am quite simply convinced of a certain principle, which is: For
the woman whose education has not taught her what is right, God
almost always opens two ways which lead thither the ways of
sorrow and of love. They are hard; those who walk in them walk
with bleeding feet and torn hands, but they also leave the
trappings of vice upon the thorns of the wayside, and reach the
journey's end in a nakedness which is not shameful in the sight
of the Lord.
Those who meet these bold travellers ought to succour them, and
to tell all that they have met them, for in so doing they point
out the way. It is not a question of setting at the outset of
life two sign-posts, one bearing the inscription "The Right Way,"
the other the inscription "The Wrong Way," and of saying to those
who come there, "Choose." One must needs, like Christ, point out
the ways which lead from the second road to the first, to those
who have been easily led astray; and it is needful that the
beginning of these ways should not be too painful nor appear too
impenetrable.
Here is Christianity with its marvellous parable of the Prodigal
Son to teach us indulgence and pardon. Jesus was full of love for
souls wounded by the passions of men; he loved to bind up their
wounds and to find in those very wounds the balm which should
heal them. Thus he said to the Magdalen: "Much shall be forgiven
thee because thou hast loved much," a sublimity of pardon which
can only have called forth a sublime faith.
Why do we make ourselves more strict than Christ? Why, holding
obstinately to the opinions of the world, which hardens itself in
order that it may be thought strong, do we reject, as it rejects,
souls bleeding at wounds by which, like a sick man's bad blood,
the evil of their past may be healed, if only a friendly hand is
stretched out to lave them and set them in the convalescence of
the heart?
It is to my own generation that I speak, to those for whom the
theories of M. de Voltaire happily exist no longer, to those who,
like myself, realize that humanity, for these last fifteen years,
has been in one of its most audacious moments of expansion. The
science of good and evil is acquired forever; faith is
refashioned, respect for sacred things has returned to us, and if
the world has not all at once become good, it has at least become
better. The efforts of every intelligent man tend in the same
direction, and every strong will is harnessed to the same
principle: Be good, be young, be true! Evil is nothing but
vanity, let us have the pride of good, and above all let us never
despair. Do not let us despise the woman who is neither mother,
sister, maid, nor wife. Do not let us limit esteem to the family
nor indulgence to egoism. Since "there is more joy in heaven over
one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine just persons
that need no repentance," let us give joy to heaven. Heaven will
render it back to us with usury. Let us leave on our way the alms
of pardon for those whom earthly desires have driven astray, whom
a divine hope shall perhaps save, and, as old women say when they
offer you. some homely remedy of their own, if it does no good it
will do no harm.
Doubtless it must seem a bold thing to attempt to deduce these
grand results out of the meagre subject that I deal with; but I
am one of those who believe that all is in little. The child is
small, and he includes the man; the brain is narrow, and it
harbours thought; the eye is but a point, and it covers leagues.
Chapter 4
Two days after, the sale was ended. It had produced 3.50,000
francs. The creditors divided among them two thirds, and the
family, a sister and a grand-nephew, received the remainder.
The sister opened her eyes very wide when the lawyer wrote to her
that she had inherited 50,000 francs. The girl had not seen her
sister for six or seven years, and did not know what had become
of her from the moment when she had disappeared from home. She
came up to Paris in haste, and great was the astonishment of
those who had known Marguerite when they saw as her only heir a
fine, fat country girl, who until then had never left her
village. She had made the fortune at a single stroke, without
even knowing the source of that fortune. She went back, I heard
afterward, to her countryside, greatly saddened by her sister's
death, but with a sadness which was somewhat lightened by the
investment at four and a half per cent which she had been able to
make.
All these circumstances, often repeated in Paris, the mother city
of scandal, had begun to be forgotten, and I was even little by
little forgetting the part I had taken in them, when a new
incident brought to my knowledge the whole of Marguerite's life,
and acquainted me with such pathetic details that I was taken
with the idea of writing down the story which I now write.
The rooms, now emptied of all their furniture, had been to let
for three or four days when one morning there was a ring at my
door.
My servant, or, rather, my porter, who acted as my servant, went
to the door and brought me a card, saying that the person who had
given it to him wished to see me.
I glanced at the card and there read these two words: Armand
Duval.
I tried to think where I had seen the name, and remembered the
first leaf of the copy of Manon Lescaut. What could the person
who had given the book to Marguerite want of me? I gave orders to
ask him in at once.
I saw a young man, blond, tall, pale, dressed in a travelling
suit which looked as if he had not changed it for some days, and
had not even taken the trouble to brush it on arriving at Paris,
for it was covered with dust.
M. Duval was deeply agitated; he made no attempt to conceal his
agitation, and it was with tears in his eyes and a trembling
voice that he said to me:
"Sir, I beg you to excuse my visit and my costume; but young
people are not very ceremonious with one another, and I was so
anxious to see you to-day that I have not even gone to the hotel
to which I have sent my luggage, and have rushed straight here,
fearing that, after all, I might miss you, early as it is."
I begged M. Duval to sit down by the fire; he did so, and, taking
his handkerchief from his pocket, hid his face in it for a
moment.
"You must be at a loss to understand," he went on, sighing sadly,
"for what purpose an unknown visitor, at such an hour, in such a
costume, and in tears, can have come to see you. I have simply
come to ask of you a great service."
"Speak on, sir, I am entirely at your disposal."
"You were present at the sale of Marguerite Gautier?"
At this word the emotion, which he had got the better of for an
instant, was too much for him, and he was obliged to cover his
eyes with his hand.
"I must seem to you very absurd," he added, "but pardon me, and
believe that I shall never forget the patience with which you
have listened to me."
"Sir," I answered, "if the service which I can render you is able
to lessen your trouble a little, tell me at once what I can do
for you, and you will find me only too happy to oblige you."
M. Duval's sorrow was sympathetic, arid in spite of myself I felt
the desire of doing him a kindness. Thereupon he said to me:
"You bought something at Marguerite's sale?"
"Yes, a book."
"Manon Lescaut?"
"Precisely."
"Have you the book still?"
"It is in my bedroom."
On hearing this, Armand Duval seemed to be relieved of a great
weight, and thanked me as if I had already rendered him a service
merely by keeping the book.
I got up and went into my room to fetch the book, which I handed
to him.
"That is it indeed," he said, looking at the inscription on the
first page and turning over the leaves; "that is it in deed," and
two big tears fell on the pages. "Well, sir," said he, lifting
his head, and no longer trying to hide from me that he had wept
and was even then on the point of weeping, "do you value this
book very greatly?"
"Why?"
"Because I have come to ask you to give it up to me."
"Pardon my curiosity, but was it you, then, who gave it to
Marguerite Gautier?"
"It was!"
"The book is yours, sir; take it back. I am happy to be able to
hand it over to you."
"But," said M. Duval with some embarrassment, "the least I can do
is to give you in return the price which you paid for it."
"Allow me to offer it to you. The price of a single volume in a
sale of that kind is a mere nothing, and I do not remember how
much I gave for it."
"You gave one hundred francs."
"True," I said, embarrassed in my turn, "how do you know?"
"It is quite simple. I hoped to reach Paris in time for the sale,
and I only managed to get here this morning. I was absolutely
resolved to have something which had belonged to her, and I
hastened to the auctioneer and asked him to allow me to see the
list of the things sold and of the buyers' names. I saw that this
volume had been bought by you, and I decided to ask you to give
it up to me, though the price you had set upon it made me fear
that you might yourself have some souvenir in connection with the
possession of the book."
As he spoke, it was evident that he was afraid I had known
Marguerite as he had known her. I hastened to reassure him.
"I knew Mlle. Gautier only by sight," I said; "her death made on
me the impression that the death of a pretty woman must always
make on a young man who had liked seeing her. I wished to buy
something at her sale, and I bid higher and higher for this book
out of mere obstinacy and to annoy some one else, who was equally
keen to obtain it, and who seemed to defy me to the contest. I
repeat, then, that the book is yours, and once more I beg you to
accept it; do not treat me as if I were an auctioneer, and let it
be the pledge between us of a longer and more intimate
acquaintance."
"Good," said Armand, holding out his hand and pressing mine; "I
accept, and I shall be grateful to you all my life."
I was very anxious to question Armand on the subject of
Marguerite, for the inscription in the book, the young man's
hurried journey, his desire to possess the volume, piqued my
curiosity; but I feared if I questioned my visitor that I might
seem to have refused his money only in order to have the right to
pry into his affairs.
It was as if he guessed my desire, for he said to me:
"Have you read the volume?"
"All through."
"What did you think of the two lines that I wrote in it?"
"I realized at once that the woman to whom you had given the
volume must have been quite outside the ordinary category, for I
could not take those two lines as a mere empty compliment."
"You were right. That woman was an angel. See, read this letter."
And he handed to me a paper which seemed to have been many times
reread.
I opened it, and this is what it contained:
"MY DEAR ARMAND:--I have received your letter. You are still
good, and I thank God for it. Yes, my friend, I am ill, and with
one of those diseases that never relent; but the interest you
still take in me makes my suffering less. I shall not live long
enough, I expect, to have the happiness of pressing the hand
which has written the kind letter I have just received; the words
of it would be enough to cure me, if anything could cure me. I
shall not see you, for I am quite near death, and you are
hundreds of leagues away. My poor friend! your Marguerite of old
times is sadly changed. It is better perhaps for you not to see
her again than to see her as she is. You ask if I forgive you;
oh, with all my heart, friend, for the way you hurt me was only a
way of proving the love you had for me. I have been in bed for a
month, and I think so much of your esteem that I write every day
the journal of my life, from the moment we left each other to the
moment when I shall be able to write no longer. If the interest
you take in me is real, Armand, when you come back go and see
Julie Duprat. She will give you my journal. You will find in it
the reason and the excuse for what has passed between us. Julie
is very good to me; we often talk of you together. She was there
when your letter came, and we both cried over it.
"If you had not sent me any word, I had told her to give you
those papers when you returned to France. Do not thank me for it.
This daily looking back on the only happy moments of my life does
me an immense amount of good, and if you will find in reading it
some excuse for the past. I, for my part, find a continual solace
in it. I should like to leave you something which would always
remind you of me, but everything here has been seized, and I have
nothing of my own.
"Do you understand, my friend? I am dying, and from my bed I can
hear a man walking to and fro in the drawing-room; my creditors
have put him there to see that nothing is taken away, and that
nothing remains to me in case I do not die. I hope they will wait
till the end before they begin to sell.
"Oh, men have no pity! or rather, I am wrong, it is God who is
just and inflexible!
"And now, dear love, you will come to my sale, and you will buy
something, for if I put aside the least thing for you, they might
accuse you of embezzling seized goods.
"It is a sad life that I am leaving!
"It would be good of God to let me see you again before I die.
According to all probability, good-bye, my friend. Pardon me if I
do not write a longer letter, but those who say they are going to
cure me wear me out with bloodletting, and my hand refuses to
write any more.
"MARGUERITE GAUTIER."
The last two words were scarcely legible. I returned the letter
to Armand, who had, no doubt, read it over again in his mind
while I was reading it on paper, for he said to me as he took it:
"Who would think that a kept woman could have written that?" And,
overcome by recollections, he gazed for some time at the writing
of the letter, which he finally carried to his lips.
"And when I think," he went on, "that she died before I could see
her, and that I shall never see her again, when I think that she
did for me what no sister would ever have done, I can not forgive
myself for having left her to die like that. Dead! Dead and
thinking of me, writing and repeating my name, poor dear
Marguerite!"
And Armand, giving free outlet to his thoughts and his tears,
held out his hand to me, and continued:
"People would think it childish enough if they saw me lament like
this over a dead woman such as she; no one will ever know what I
made that woman suffer, how cruel I have been to her! how good,
how resigned she was! I thought it was I who had to forgive her,
and to-day I feel unworthy of the forgiveness which she grants
me. Oh, I would give ten years of my life to weep at her feet for
an hour!"
It is always difficult to console a sorrow that is unknown to
one, and nevertheless I felt so lively a sympathy for the young
man, he made me so frankly the confidant of his distress, that I
believed a word from me would not be indifferent to him, and I
said:
"Have you no parents, no friends? Hope. Go and see them; they
will console you. As for me, I can only pity you."
"It is true," he said, rising and walking to and fro in the room,
"I am wearying you. Pardon me, I did not reflect how little my
sorrow must mean to you, and that I am intruding upon you
something which can not and ought not to interest you at all."
"You mistake my meaning. I am entirely at your service; only I
regret my inability to calm your distress. If my society and that
of my friends can give you any distraction, if, in short, you
have need of me, no matter in what way, I hope you will realize
how much pleasure it will give me to do anything for you."
"Pardon, pardon," said he; "sorrow sharpens the sensations. Let
me stay here for a few minutes longer, long enough to dry my
eyes, so that the idlers in the street may not look upon it as a
curiosity to see a big fellow like me crying. You have made me
very happy by giving me this book. I do not know how I can ever
express my gratitude to you."
"By giving me a little of your friendship," said I, "and by
telling me the cause of your suffering. One feels better while
telling what one suffers."
"You are right. But to-day I have too much need of tears; I can
not very well talk. One day I will tell you the whole story, and
you will see if I have reason for regretting the poor girl. And
now," he added, rubbing his eyes for the last time, and looking
at himself in the glass, "say that you do not think me too
absolutely idiotic, and allow me to come back and see you another
time."
He cast on me a gentle and amiable look. I was near embracing
him. As for him, his eyes again began to fill with tears; he saw
that I perceived it and turned away his head.
"Come," I said, "courage."
"Good-bye," he said.
And, making a desperate effort to restrain his tears, he rushed
rather than went out of the room.
I lifted the curtain of my window, and saw him get into the
cabriolet which awaited him at the door; but scarcely was he
seated before he burst into tears and hid his face in his
pocket-handkerchief.
Chapter 5
A good while elapsed before I heard anything more of Armand, but,
on the other hand, I was constantly hearing of Marguerite.
I do not know if you have noticed, if once the name of anybody
who might in the natural course of things have always remained
unknown, or at all events indifferent to you, should he mentioned
before you, immediately details begin to group themselves about
the name, and you find all your friends talking to you about
something which they have never mentioned to you before. You
discover that this person was almost touching you and has passed
close to you many times in your life without your noticing it;
you find coincidences in the events which are told you, a real
affinity with certain events of your own existence. I was not
absolutely at that point in regard to Marguerite, for I had seen
and met her, I knew her by sight and by reputation; nevertheless,
since the moment of the sale, her name came to my ears so
frequently, and, owing to the circumstance that I have mentioned
in the last chapter, that name was associated with so profound a
sorrow, that my curiosity increased in proportion with my
astonishment. The consequence was that whenever I met friends to
whom I had never breathed the name of Marguerite, I always began
by saying:
"Did you ever know a certain Marguerite Gautier?"
"The Lady of the Camellias?"
"Exactly."
"Oh, very well!"
The word was sometimes accompanied by a smile which could leave
no doubt as to its meaning.
"Well, what sort of a girl was she?"
"A good sort of girl."
"Is that all?"
"Oh, yes; more intelligence and perhaps a little more heart than
most."
"Do you know anything particular about her?"
"She ruined Baron de G."
"No more than that?"
"She was the mistress of the old Duke of . . ."
"Was she really his mistress?"
"So they say; at all events, he gave her a great deal of money."
The general outlines were always the same. Nevertheless I was
anxious to find out something about the relations between
Marguerite and Armand. Meeting one day a man who was constantly
about with known women, I asked him: "Did you know Marguerite
Gautier?"
The answer was the usual: "Very well."
"What sort of a girl was she?"
"A fine, good girl. I was very sorry to hear of her death."
"Had she not a lover called Armand Duval?"
"Tall and blond?"
"Yes.
"It is quite true."
"Who was this Armand?"
"A fellow who squandered on her the little money he had, and then
had to leave her. They say he was quite wild about it."
"And she?"
"They always say she was very much in love with him, but as girls
like that are in love. It is no good to ask them for what they
can not give."
"What has become of Armand?"
"I don't know. We knew him very little. He was with Marguerite
for five or six months in the country. When she came back, he had
gone."
"And you have never seen him since?"
"Never."
I, too, had not seen Armand again. I was beginning to ask myself
if, when he had come to see me, the recent news of Marguerite's
death had not exaggerated his former love, and consequently his
sorrow, and I said to myself that perhaps he had already
forgotten the dead woman, and along with her his promise to come
and see me again. This supposition would have seemed probable
enough in most instances, but in Armand's despair there had been
an accent of real sincerity, and, going from one extreme to
another, I imagined that distress had brought on an illness, and
that my not seeing him was explained by the fact that he was ill,
perhaps dead.
I was interested in the young man in spite of myself. Perhaps
there was some selfishness in this interest; perhaps I guessed at
some pathetic love story under all this sorrow; perhaps my desire
to know all about it had much to do with the anxiety which
Armand's silence caused me. Since M. Duval did not return to see
me, I decided to go and see him. A pretext was not difficult to
find; unluckily I did not know his address, and no one among
those whom I questioned could give it to me.
I went to the Rue d'Antin; perhaps Marguerite's porter would know
where Armand lived. There was a new porter; he knew as little
about it as I. I then asked in what cemetery Mlle. Gautier had
been buried. It was the Montmartre Cemetery. It was now the month
of April; the weather was fine, the graves were not likely to
look as sad and desolate as they do in winter; in short, it was
warm enough for the living to think a little of the dead, and pay
them a visit. I went to the cemetery, saying to myself: "One
glance at Marguerite's grave, and I shall know if Armand's sorrow
still exists, and perhaps I may find out what has become of him."
I entered the keeper's lodge, and asked him if on the 22nd of
February a woman named Marguerite Gautier had not been buried in
the Montmartre Cemetery. He turned over the pages of a big book
in which those who enter this last resting-place are inscribed
and numbered, and replied that on the 22nd of February, at 12
o'clock, a woman of that name had been buried.
I asked him to show me the grave, for there is no finding one's
way without a guide in this city of the dead, which has its
streets like a city of the living. The keeper called over a
gardener, to whom he gave the necessary instructions; the
gardener interrupted him, saying: "I know, I know.--It is not
difficult to find that grave," he added, turning to me.
"Why?"
"Because it has very different flowers from the others."
"Is it you who look after it?"
"Yes, sir; and I wish all relations took as much trouble about
the dead as the young man who gave me my orders."
After several turnings, the gardener stopped and said to me:
"Here we are."
I saw before me a square of flowers which one would never have
taken for a grave, if it had not been for a white marble slab
bearing a name.
The marble slab stood upright, an iron railing marked the limits
of the ground purchased, and the earth was covered with white
camellias. "What do you say to that?" said the gardener.
"It is beautiful."
"And whenever a camellia fades, I have orders to replace it."
"Who gave you the order?"
"A young gentleman, who cried the first time he came here; an old
pal of hers, I suppose, for they say she was a gay one. Very
pretty, too, I believe. Did you know her, sir?" "Yes."
"Like the other?" said the gardener, with a knowing smile. "No, I
never spoke to her."
"And you come here, too! It is very good of you, for those that
come to see the poor girl don't exactly cumber the cemetery."
"Doesn't anybody come?"
"Nobody, except that young gentleman who came once."
"Only once?"
"Yes, sir."
"He never came back again?"
"No, but he will when he gets home."
"He is away somewhere?"
"Yes."
"Do you know where he is?"
"I believe he has gone to see Mlle. Gautier's sister."
"What does he want there?"
"He has gone to get her authority to have the corpse dug up again
and put somewhere else."
"Why won't he let it remain here?"
"You know, sir, people have queer notions about dead folk. We see
something of that every day. The ground here was only bought for
five years, and this young gentleman wants a perpetual lease and
a bigger plot of ground; it will be better in the new part."
"What do you call the new part?"
"The new plots of ground that are for sale, there to the left. If
the cemetery had always been kept like it is now, there wouldn't
be the like of it in the world; but there is still plenty to do
before it will be quite all it should be. And then people are so
queer!"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that there are people who carry their pride even here.
Now, this Demoiselle Gautier, it appears she lived a bit free, if
you'll excuse my saying so. Poor lady, she's dead now; there's no
more of her left than of them that no one has a word to say
against. We water them every day. Well, when the relatives of the
folk that are buried beside her found out the sort of person she
was, what do you think they said? That they would try to keep her
out from here, and that there ought to be a piece of ground
somewhere apart for these sort of women, like there is for the
poor. Did you ever hear of such a thing? I gave it to them
straight, I did: well-to-do folk who come to see their dead four
times a year, and bring their flowers themselves, and what
flowers! and look twice at the keep of them they pretend to cry
over, and write on their tombstones all about the tears they
haven't shed, and come and make difficulties about their
neighbours. You may believe me or not, sir, I never knew the
young lady; I don't know what she did. Well, I'm quite in love
with the poor thing; I look after her well, and I let her have
her camellias at an honest price. She is the dead body that I
like the best. You see, sir, we are obliged to love the dead, for
we are kept so busy, we have hardly time to love anything else."
I looked at the man, and some of my readers will understand,
without my needing to explain it to them, the emotion which I
felt on hearing him. He observed it, no doubt, for he went on:
"They tell me there were people who ruined themselves over that
girl, and lovers that worshipped her; well, when I think there
isn't one of them that so much as buys her a flower now, that's
queer, sir, and sad. And, after all, she isn't so badly off, for
she has her grave to herself, and if there is only one who
remembers her, he makes up for the others. But we have other poor
girls here, just like her and just her age, and they are just
thrown into a pauper's grave, and it breaks my heart when I hear
their poor bodies drop into the earth. And not a soul thinks
about them any more, once they are dead! 'Tisn't a merry trade,
ours, especially when we have a little heart left. What do you
expect? I can't help it. I have a fine, strapping girl myself;
she's just twenty, and when a girl of that age comes here I think
of her, and I don't care if it's a great lady or a vagabond, I
can't help feeling it a bit. But I am taking up your time, sir,
with my tales, and it wasn't to hear them you came here. I was
told to show you Mlle. Gautier's grave; here you have it. Is
there anything else I can do for you?"
"Do you know M. Armand Duval's address?" I asked.
"Yes; he lives at Rue de --; at least, that's where I always go
to get my money for the flowers you see there."
"Thanks, my good man."
I gave one more look at the grave covered with flowers, half
longing to penetrate the depths of the earth and see what the
earth had made of the fair creature that had been cast to it;
then I walked sadly away.
"Do you want to see M. Duval, sir?" said the gardener, who was
walking beside me.
"Yes."
"Well, I am pretty sure he is not back yet, or he would have been
here already."
"You don't think he has forgotten Marguerite?"
"I am not only sure he hasn't, but I would wager that he wants to
change her grave simply in order to have one more look at her."
"Why do you think that?"
"The first word he said to me when he came to the cemetery was:
'How can I see her again?' That can't be done unless there is a
change of grave, and I told him all about the formalities that
have to be attended to in getting it done; for, you see, if you
want to move a body from one grave to another you must have it
identified, and only the family can give leave for it under the
direction of a police inspector. That is why M. Duval has gone to
see Mlle. Gautier's sister, and you may be sure his first visit
will be for me."
We had come to the cemetery gate. I thanked the gardener again,
putting a few coins into his hand, and made my way to the address
he had given me.
Armand had not yet returned. I left word for him, begging him to
come and see me as soon as he arrived, or to send me word where I
could find him.
Next day, in the morning, I received a letter from Duval, telling
me of his return, and asking me to call on him, as he was so worn
out with fatigue that it was impossible for him to go out.
Chapter 6
I found Armand in bed. On seeing me he held out a burning hand.
"You are feverish," I said to him. "It is nothing, the fatigue of
a rapid journey; that is all." "You have been to see Marguerite's
sister?" "Yes; who told you?" "I knew it. Did you get what you
wanted?"
"Yes; but who told you of my journey, and of my reason for taking
it?"
"The gardener of the cemetery."
"You have seen the tomb?"
I scarcely dared reply, for the tone in which the words were
spoken proved to me that the speaker was still possessed by the
emotion which I had witnessed before, and that every time his
thoughts or speech travelled back to that mournful subject
emotion would still, for a long time to come, prove stronger than
his will. I contented myself with a nod of the head.
"He has looked after it well?" continued Armand. Two big tears
rolled down the cheeks of the sick man, and he turned away his
head to hide them from me. I pretended not to see them, and tried
to change the conversation. "You have been away three weeks," I
said.
Armand passed his hand across his eyes and replied, "Exactly
three weeks."
"You had a long journey."
"Oh, I was not travelling all the time. I was ill for a fortnight
or I should have returned long ago; but I had scarcely got there
when I took this fever, and I was obliged to keep my room."
"And you started to come back before you were really well?"
"If I had remained in the place for another week, I should have
died there."
"Well, now you are back again, you must take care of yourself;
your friends will come and look after you; myself, first of all,
if you will allow me."
"I shall get up in a couple of hours."
"It would be very unwise."
"I must."
"What have you to do in such a great hurry?"
"I must go to the inspector of police."
"Why do you not get one of your friends to see after the matter?
It is likely to make you worse than you are now."
"It is my only chance of getting better. I must see her. Ever
since I heard of her death, especially since I saw her grave, I
have not been able to sleep. I can not realize that this woman,
so young and so beautiful when I left her, is really dead. I must
convince myself of it. I must see what God has done with a being
that I have loved so much, and perhaps the horror of the sight
will cure me of my despair. Will you accompany me, if it won't be
troubling you too much?"
"What did her sister say about it?"
"Nothing. She seemed greatly surprised that a stranger wanted to
buy a plot of ground and give Marguerite a new grave, and she
immediately signed the authorization that I asked her for."
"Believe me, it would be better to wait until you are quite
well."
"Have no fear; I shall be quite composed. Besides, I should
simply go out of my mind if I were not to carry out a resolution
which I have set myself to carry out. I swear to you that I shall
never be myself again until I have seen Marguerite. It is perhaps
the thirst of the fever, a sleepless night's dream, a moment's
delirium; but though I were to become a Trappist, like M. de
Rance', after having seen, I will see."
"I understand," I said to Armand, "and I am at your service. Have
you seen Julie Duprat?"
"Yes, I saw her the day I returned, for the first time."
"Did she give you the papers that Marguerite had left for you?"
Armand drew a roll of papers from under his pillow, and
immediately put them back.
"I know all that is in these papers by heart," he said. "For
three weeks I have read them ten times over every day. You shall
read them, too, but later on, when I am calmer, and can make you
understand all the love and tenderness hidden away in this
confession. For the moment I want you to do me a service."
"What is it?"
"Your cab is below?"
"Yes.
"Well, will you take my passport and ask if there are any letters
for me at the poste restante? My father and sister must have
written to me at Paris, and I went away in such haste that I did
not go and see before leaving. When you come back we will go
together to the inspector of police, and arrange for to-morrow's
ceremony."
Armand handed me his passport, and I went to Rue Jean Jacques
Rousseau. There were two letters addressed to Duval. I took them
and returned. When I re-entered the room Armand was dressed and
ready to go out.
"Thanks," he said, taking the letters. "Yes," he added, after
glancing at the addresses, "they are from my father and sister.
They must have been quite at a loss to understand my silence."
He opened the letters, guessed at rather than read them, for each
was of four pages; and a moment after folded them up. "Come," he
said, "I will answer tomorrow."
We went to the police station, and Armand handed in the
permission signed by Marguerite's sister. He received in return a
letter to the keeper of the cemetery, and it was settled that the
disinterment was to take place next day, at ten o'clock, that I
should call for him an hour before, and that we should go to the
cemetery together.
I confess that I was curious to be present, and I did not sleep
all night. judging from the thoughts which filled my brain, it
must have been a long night for Armand. When I entered his room
at nine on the following morning he was frightfully pale, but
seemed calm. He smiled and held out his hand. His candles were
burned out; and before leaving he took a very heavy letter
addressed to his father, and no doubt containing an account of
that night's impressions.
Half an hour later we were at Montmartre. The police inspector
was there already. We walked slowly in the direction of
Marguerite's grave. The inspector went in front; Armand and I
followed a few steps behind.
From time to time I felt my companion's arm tremble convulsively,
as if he shivered from head to feet. I looked at him. He
understood the look, and smiled at me; we had not exchanged a
word since leaving the house.
Just before we reached the grave, Armand stopped to wipe his
face, which was covered with great drops of sweat. I took
advantage of the pause to draw in a long breath, for I, too, felt
as if I had a weight on my chest.
What is the origin of that mournful pleasure which we find in
sights of this kind? When we reached the grave the gardener had
removed all the flower-pots, the iron railing had been taken
away, and two men were turning up the soil.
Armand leaned against a tree and watched. All his life seemed to
pass before his eyes. Suddenly one of the two pickaxes struck
against a stone. At the sound Armand recoiled, as at an electric
shock, and seized my hand with such force as to give me pain.
One of the grave-diggers took a shovel and began emptying out the
earth; then, when only the stones covering the coffin were left,
he threw them out one by one.
I scrutinized Armand, for every moment I was afraid lest the
emotions which he was visibly repressing should prove too much
for him; but he still watched, his eyes fixed and wide open, like
the eyes of a madman, and a slight trembling of the cheeks and
lips were the only signs of the violent nervous crisis under
which he was suffering.
As for me, all I can say is that I regretted having come.
When the coffin was uncovered the inspector said to the
grave-digger: "Open it." They obeyed, as if it were the most
natural thing in the world.
The coffin was of oak, and they began to unscrew the lid. The
humidity of the earth had rusted the screws, and it was not
without some difficulty that the coffin was opened. A painful
odour arose in spite of the aromatic plants with which it was
covered.
"O my God, my God!" murmured Armand, and turned paler than
before.
Even the grave-digger drew back.
A great white shroud covered the corpse, closely outlining some
of its contours. This shroud was almost completely eaten away at
one end, and left one of the feet visible.
I was nearly fainting, and at the moment of writing these lines I
see the whole scene over again in all its imposing reality.
"Quick," said the inspector. Thereupon one of the men put out his
hand, began to unsew the shroud, and taking hold of it by one end
suddenly laid bare the face of Marguerite.
It was terrible to see, it is horrible to relate. The eyes were
nothing but two holes, the lips had disappeared, vanished, and
the white teeth were tightly set. The black hair, long and dry,
was pressed tightly about the forehead, and half veiled the green
hollows of the cheeks; and yet I recognised in this face the
joyous white and rose face that I had seen so often.
Armand, unable to turn away his eyes, had put the handkerchief to
his mouth and bit it.
For my part, it was as if a circle of iron tightened about my
head, a veil covered my eyes, a rumbling filled my ears, and all
I could do was to unstop a smelling bottle which I happened to
have with me, and to draw in long breaths of it.
Through this bewilderment I heard the inspector say to Duval, "Do
you identify?"
"Yes," replied the young man in a dull voice.
"Then fasten it up and take it away," said the inspector.
The grave-diggers put back the shroud over the face of the
corpse, fastened up the coffin, took hold of each end of it, and
began to carry it toward the place where they had been told to
take it.
Armand did not move. His eyes were fixed upon the empty grave; he
was as white as the corpse which we had just seen. He looked as
if he had been turned to stone.
I saw what was coming as soon as the pain caused by the spectacle
should have abated and thus ceased to sustain him. I went up to
the inspector. "Is this gentleman's presence still necessary?" I
said, pointing to Armand.
"No," he replied, "and I should advise you to take him away. He
looks ill."
"Come," I said to Armand, taking him by the arm.
"What?" he said, looking at me as if he did not recognise me.
"It is all over," I added. "You must come, my friend; you are
quite white; you are cold. These emotions will be too much for
you."
"You are right. Let us go," he answered mechanically, but without
moving a step.
I took him by the arm and led him along. He let himself be guided
like a child, only from time to time murmuring, "Did you see her
eyes?" and he turned as if the vision had recalled her.
Nevertheless, his steps became more irregular; he seemed to walk
by a series of jerks; his teeth chattered; his hands were cold; a
violent agitation ran through his body. I spoke to him; he did
not answer. He was just able to let himself be led along. A cab
was waiting at the gate. It was only just in time. Scarcely had
he seated himself, when the shivering became more violent, and he
had an actual attack of nerves, in the midst of which his fear of
frightening me made him press my hand and whisper: "It is
nothing, nothing. I want to weep."
His chest laboured, his eyes were injected with blood, but no
tears came. I made him smell the salts which I had with me, and
when we reached his house only the shivering remained.
With the help of his servant I put him to bed, lit a big fire in
his room, and hurried off to my doctor, to whom I told all that
had happened. He hastened with me.
Armand was flushed and delirious; he stammered out disconnected
words, in which only the name of Marguerite could be distinctly
heard.
"Well?" I said to the doctor when he had examined the patient.
"Well, he has neither more nor less than brain fever, and very
lucky it is for him, for I firmly believe (God forgive me!) that
he would have gone out of his mind. Fortunately, the physical
malady will kill the mental one, and in a month's time he will be
free from the one and perhaps from the other."
Chapter 7
Illnesses like Armand's have one fortunate thing about them: they
either kill outright or are very soon overcome. A fortnight after
the events which I have just related Armand was convalescent, and
we had already become great friends. During the whole course of
his illness I had hardly left his side.
Spring was profuse in its flowers, its leaves, its birds, its
songs; and my friend's window opened gaily upon his garden, from
which a reviving breath of health seemed to come to him. The
doctor had allowed him to get up, and we often sat talking at the
open window, at the hour when the sun is at its height, from
twelve to two. I was careful not to refer to Marguerite, fearing
lest the name should awaken sad recollections hidden under the
apparent calm of the invalid; but Armand, on the contrary, seemed
to delight in speaking of her, not as formerly, with tears in his
eyes, but with a sweet smile which reassured me as to the state
of his mind.
I had noticed that ever since his last visit to the cemetery, and
the sight which had brought on so violent a crisis, sorrow seemed
to have been overcome by sickness, and Marguerite's death no
longer appeared to him under its former aspect. A kind of
consolation had sprung from the certainty of which he was now
fully persuaded, and in order to banish the sombre picture which
often presented itself to him, he returned upon the happy
recollections of his liaison with Marguerite, and seemed resolved
to think of nothing else.
The body was too much weakened by the attack of fever, and even
by the process of its cure, to permit him any violent emotions,
and the universal joy of spring which wrapped him round carried
his thoughts instinctively to images of joy. He had always
obstinately refused to tell his family of the danger which he had
been in, and when he was well again his father did not even know
that he had been ill.
One evening we had sat at the window later than usual; the
weather had been superb, and the sun sank to sleep in a twilight
dazzling with gold and azure. Though we were in Paris, the
verdure which surrounded us seemed to shut us off from the world,
and our conversation was only now and again disturbed by the
sound of a passing vehicle.
"It was about this time of the year, on the evening of a day like
this, that I first met Marguerite," said Armand to me, as if he
were listening to his own thoughts rather than to what I was
saying. I did not answer. Then turning toward me, he said:
"I must tell you the whole story; you will make a book out of it;
no one will believe it, but it will perhaps be interesting to
do."
"You will tell me all about it later on, my friend," I said to
him; "you are not strong enough yet."
"It is a warm evening, I have eaten my ration of chicken," he
said to me, smiling; "I have no fever, we have nothing to do, I
will tell it to you now."
"Since you really wish it, I will listen."
This is what he told me, and I have scarcely changed a word of
the touching story.
Yes (Armand went on, letting his head sink back on the chair),
yes, it was just such an evening as this. I had spent the day in
the country with one of my friends, Gaston R--. We returned to
Paris in the evening, and not knowing what to do we went to the
Varietes. We went out during one of the entr'actes, and a tall
woman passed us in the corridor, to whom my friend bowed.
"Whom are you bowing to?" I asked.
"Marguerite Gautier," he said.
"She seems much changed, for I did not recognise her," I said,
with an emotion that you will soon understand.
"She has been ill; the poor girl won't last long."
I remember the words as if they had been spoken to me yesterday.
I must tell you, my friend, that for two years the sight of this
girl had made a strange impression on me whenever I came across
her. Without knowing why, I turned pale and my heart beat
violently. I have a friend who studies the occult sciences, and
he would call what I experienced "the affinity of fluids"; as for
me, I only know that I was fated to fall in love with Marguerite,
and that I foresaw it.
It is certainly the fact that she made a very definite impression
upon me, that many of my friends had noticed it and that they had
been much amused when they saw who it was that made this
impression upon me.
The first time I ever saw her was in the Place de la Bourse,
outside Susse's; an open carriage was stationed there, and a
woman dressed in white got down from it. A murmur of admiration
greeted her as she entered the shop. As for me, I was rivetted to
the spot from the moment she went in till the moment when she
came out again. I could see her through the shop windows
selecting what she had come to buy. I might have gone in, but I
dared not. I did not know who she was, and I was afraid lest she
should guess why I had come in and be offended. Nevertheless, I
did not think I should ever see her again.
She was elegantly dressed; she wore a muslin dress with many
flounces, an Indian shawl embroidered at the corners with gold
and silk flowers, a straw hat, a single bracelet, and a heavy
gold chain, such as was just then beginning to be the fashion.
She returned to her carriage and drove away. One of the shopmen
stood at the door looking after his elegant customer's carriage.
I went up to him and asked him what was the lady's name.
"Mademoiselle Marguerite Gautier," he replied. I dared not ask
him for her address, and went on my way.
The recollection of this vision, for it was really a vision,
would not leave my mind like so many visions I had seen, and I
looked everywhere for this royally beautiful woman in white.
A few days later there was a great performance at the Opera
Comique. The first person I saw in one of the boxes was
Marguerite Gautier.
The young man whom I was with recognised her immediately, for he
said to me, mentioning her name: "Look at that pretty girl."
At that moment Marguerite turned her opera-glass in our direction
and, seeing my friend, smiled and beckoned to him to come to her.
"I will go and say 'How do you do?' to her," he said, "and will
be back in a moment."
"I could not help saying "Happy man!"
"Why?"
"To go and see that woman."
"Are you in love with her?"
"No," I said, flushing, for I really did not know what to say;
"but I should very much like to know her."
"Come with me. I will introduce you."
"Ask her if you may."
"Really, there is no need to be particular with her; come."
What he said troubled me. I feared to discover that Marguerite
was not worthy of the sentiment which I felt for her.
In a book of Alphonse Karr entitles Am Rauchen, there is a man
who one evening follows a very elegant woman, with whom he had
fallen in love with at first sight on account of her beauty. Only
to kiss her hand he felt that he had the strength to undertake
anything, the will to conquer anything, the courage to achieve
anything. He scarcely dares glance at the trim ankle which she
shows as she holds her dress out of the mud. While he is dreaming
of all that he would do to possess this woman, she stops at the
corner of the street and asks if he will come home with her. He
turns his head, crosses the street, and goes sadly back to his
own house.
I recalled the story, and, having longed to suffer for this
woman, I was afraid that she would accept me too promptly and
give me at once what I fain would have purchased by long waiting
or some great sacrifice. We men are built like that, and it is
very fortunate that the imagination lends so much poetry to the
senses, and that the desires of the body make thus such
concession to the dreams of the soul. If any one had said to me,
You shall have this woman to-night and be killed tomorrow, I
would have accepted. If any one had said to me, you can be her
lover for ten pounds, I would have refused. I would have cried
like a child who sees the castle he has been dreaming about
vanish away as he awakens from sleep.
All the same, I wished to know her; it was my only means of
making up my mind about her. I therefore said to my friend that I
insisted on having her permission to be introduced to her, and I
wandered to and fro in the corridors, saying to myself that in a
moment's time she was going to see me, and that I should not know
which way to look. I tried (sublime childishness of love!) to
string together the words I should say to her.
A moment after my friend returned. "She is expecting us," he
said.
"Is she alone?" I asked.
"With another woman."
"There are no men?"
"No."
"Come, then."
My friend went toward the door of the theatre.
"That is not the way," I said.
"We must go and get some sweets. She asked me for some."
We went into a confectioner's in the passage de l'Opera. I would
have bought the whole shop, and I was looking about to see what
sweets to choose, when my friend asked for a pound of raisins
glaces.
"Do you know if she likes them?"
"She eats no other kind of sweets; everybody knows it.
"Ah," he went on when we had left the shop, "do you know what
kind of woman it is that I am going to introduce you to? Don't
imagine it is a duchess. It is simply a kept woman, very much
kept, my dear fellow; don't be shy, say anything that comes into
your head."
"Yes, yes," I stammered, and I followed him, saying to myself
that I should soon cure myself of my passion.
When I entered the box Marguerite was in fits of laughter. I
would rather that she had been sad. My friend introduced me;
Marguerite gave me a little nod, and said, "And my sweets?"
"Here they are."
She looked at me as she took them. I dropped my eyes and blushed.
She leaned across to her neighbour and said something in her ear,
at which both laughed. Evidently I was the cause of their mirth,
and my embarrassment increased. At that time I had as mistress a
very affectionate and sentimental little person, whose sentiment
and whose melancholy letters amused me greatly. I realized the
pain I must have given her by what I now experienced, and for
five minutes I loved her as no woman was ever loved.
Marguerite ate her raisins glaces without taking any more notice
of me. The friend who had introduced me did not wish to let me
remain in so ridiculous a position.
"Marguerite," he said, "you must not be surprised if M. Duval
says nothing: you overwhelm him to such a degree that he can not
find a word to say."
"I should say, on the contrary, that he has only come with you
because it would have bored you to come here by yourself."
"If that were true," I said, "I should not have begged Ernest to
ask your permission to introduce me."
"Perhaps that was only in order to put off the fatal moment."
However little one may have known women like Marguerite, one can
not but know the delight they take in pretending to be witty and
in teasing the people whom they meet for the first time. It is no
doubt a return for the humiliations which they often have to
submit to on the part of those whom they see every day.
To answer them properly, one requires a certain knack, and I had
not had the opportunity of acquiring it; besides, the idea that I
had formed of Marguerite accentuated the effects of her mockery.
Nothing that dame from her was indifferent to me. I rose to my
feet, saying in an altered voice, which I could not entirely
control:
"If that is what you think of me, madame, I have only to ask your
pardon for my indiscretion, and to take leave of you with the
assurance that it shall not occur again."
Thereupon I bowed and quitted the box. I had scarcely closed the
door when I heard a third peal of laughter. It would not have
been well for anybody who had elbowed me at that moment.
I returned to my seat. The signal for raising the curtain was
given. Ernest came back to his place beside me.
"What a way you behaved!" he said, as he sat down. "They will
think you are mad."
"What did Marguerite say after I had gone?"
"She laughed, and said she had never seen any one so funny. But
don't look upon it as a lost chance; only do not do these women
the honour of taking them seriously. They do not know what
politeness and ceremony are. It is as if you were to offer
perfumes to dogs--they would think it smelled bad, and go and
roll in the gutter."
"After all, what does it matter to me?" I said, affecting to
speak in a nonchalant way. "I shall never see this woman again,
and if I liked her before meeting her, it is quite different now
that I know her."
"Bah! I don't despair of seeing you one day at the back of her
box, and of bearing that you are ruining yourself for her.
However, you are right, she hasn't been well brought up; but she
would be a charming mistress to have."
Happily, the curtain rose and my friend was silent. I could not
possibly tell you what they were acting. All that I remember is
that from time to time I raised my eyes to the box I had quitted
so abruptly, and that the faces of fresh visitors succeeded one
another all the time.
I was far from having given up thinking about Marguerite. Another
feeling had taken possession of me. It seemed to me that I had
her insult and my absurdity to wipe out; I said to myself that if
I spent every penny I had, I would win her and win my right to
the place I had abandoned so quickly.
Before the performance was over Marguerite and her friend left
the box. I rose from my seat.
"Are you going?" said Ernest.
"Yes."
"Why?"
At that moment he saw that the box was empty.
"Go, go," he said, "and good luck, or rather better luck."
I went out.
I heard the rustle of dresses, the sound of voices, on the
staircase. I stood aside, and, without being seen, saw the two
women pass me, accompanied by two young men. At the entrance to
the theatre they were met by a footman.
"Tell the coachman to wait at the door of the Cafe' Anglais,"
said Marguerite. "We will walk there."
A few minutes afterward I saw Marguerite from the street at a
window of one of the large rooms of the restaurant, pulling the
camellias of her bouquet to pieces, one by one. One of the two
men was leaning over her shoulder and whispering in her ear. I
took up my position at the Maison-d'or, in one of the first-floor
rooms, and did not lose sight of the window for an instant. At
one in the morning Marguerite got into her carriage with her
three friends. I took a cab and followed them. The carriage
stopped at No. 9, Rue d'Antin. Marguerite got out and went in
alone. It was no doubt a mere chance, but the chance filled me
with delight.
From that time forward, I often met Marguerite at the theatre or
in the Champs-Elysees. Always there was the same gaiety in her,
the same emotion in me.
At last a fortnight passed without my meeting her. I met Gaston
and asked after her.
"Poor girl, she is very ill," he answered.
"What is the matter?"
"She is consumptive, and the sort of life she leads isn't exactly
the thing to cure her. She has taken to her bed; she is dying."
The heart is a strange thing; I was almost glad at hearing it.
Every day I went to ask after her, without leaving my name or my
card. I heard she was convalescent and had gone to Bagneres.
Time went by, the impression, if not the memory, faded gradually
from my mind. I travelled; love affairs, habits, work, took the
place of other thoughts, and when I recalled this adventure I
looked upon it as one of those passions which one has when one is
very young, and laughs at soon afterward.
For the rest, it was no credit to me to have got the better of
this recollection, for I had completely lost sight of Marguerite,
and, as I told you, when she passed me in the corridor of the
Varietes, I did not recognise her. She was veiled, it is true;
but, veiled though she might have been two years earlier, I
should not have needed to see her in order to recognise her: I
should have known her intuitively. All the same, my heart began
to beat when I knew that it was she; and the two years that had
passed since I saw her, and what had seemed to be the results of
that separation, vanished in smoke at the mere touch of her
dress.
Chapter 8
However (continued Armand after a pause), while I knew myself to
be still in love with her, I felt more sure of myself, and part
of my desire to speak to Marguerite again was a wish to make her
see that I was stronger than she.
How many ways does the heart take, how many reasons does it
invent for itself, in order to arrive at what it wants!
I could not remain in the corridor, and I returned to my place in
the stalls, looking hastily around to see what box she was in.
She was in a ground-floor box, quite alone. She had changed, as I
have told you, and no longer wore an indifferent smile on her
lips. She had suffered; she was still suffering. Though it was
April, she was still wearing a winter costume, all wrapped up in
furs.
I gazed at her so fixedly that my eyes attracted hers. She looked
at me for a few seconds, put up her opera-glass to see me better,
and seemed to think she recognised me, without being quite sure
who I was, for when she put down her glasses, a smile, that
charming, feminine salutation, flitted across her lips, as if to
answer the bow which she seemed to expect; but I did not respond,
so as to have an advantage over her, as if I had forgotten, while
she remembered. Supposing herself mistaken,, she looked away.
The curtain went up. I have often seen Marguerite at the theatre.
I never saw her pay the slightest attention to what was being
acted. As for me, the performance interested me equally little,
and I paid no attention to anything but her, though doing my
utmost to keep her from noticing it.
Presently I saw her glancing across at the person who was in the
opposite box; on looking, I saw a woman with whom I was quite
familiar. She had once been a kept woman, and had tried to go on
the stage, had failed, and, relying on her acquaintance with
fashionable people in Paris, had gone into business and taken a
milliner's shop. I saw in her a means of meeting with Marguerite,
and profited by a moment in which she looked my way to wave my
hand to her. As I expected, she beckoned to me to come to her
box.
Prudence Duvernoy (that was the milliner's auspicious name) was
one of those fat women of forty with whom one requires very
little diplomacy to make them understand what one wants to know,
especially when what one wants to know is as simple as what I had
to ask of her.
I took advantage of a moment when she was smiling across at
Marguerite to ask her, "Whom are you looking at?"
"Marguerite Gautier."
"You know her?"
"Yes, I am her milliner, and she is a neighbour of mine."
"Do you live in the Rue d'Antin?"
"No. 7. The window of her dressing-room looks on to the window of
mine."
"They say she is a charming girl."
"Don't you know her?"
"No, but I should like to."
"Shall I ask her to come over to our box?"
"No, I would rather for you to introduce me to her."
"At her own house?"
"Yes.
"That is more difficult."
"Why?"
"Because she is under the protection of a jealous old duke."
"'Protection' is charming."
"Yes, protection," replied Prudence. "Poor old man, he would be
greatly embarrassed to offer her anything else."
Prudence then told me how Marguerite had made the acquaintance of
the duke at Bagneres.
"That, then," I continued, "is why she is alone here?"
"Precisely."
"But who will see her home?"
"He will."
"He will come for her?"
"In a moment."
"And you, who is seeing you home?"
"No one."
"May I offer myself?"
"But you are with a friend, are you not?"
"May we offer, then?"
"Who is your friend?"
"A charming fellow, very amusing. He will be delighted to make
your acquaintance."
"Well, all right; we will go after this piece is over, for I know
the last piece."
"With pleasure; I will go and tell my friend."
"Go, then. Ah," added Prudence, as I was going, "there is the
duke just coming into Marguerite's box."
I looked at him. A man of about seventy had sat down behind her,
and was giving her a bag of sweets, into which she dipped at
once, smiling. Then she held it out toward Prudence, with a
gesture which seemed to say, "Will you have some?"
"No," signalled Prudence.
Marguerite drew back the bag, and, turning, began to talk with
the duke.
It may sound childish to tell you all these details, but
everything relating to Marguerite is so fresh in my memory that I
can not help recalling them now.
I went back to Gaston and told him of the arrangement I had made
for him and for me. He agreed, and we left our stalls to go round
to Mme. Duvernoy's box. We had scarcely opened the door leading
into the stalls when we had to stand aside to allow Marguerite
and the duke to pass. I would have given ten years of my life to
have been in the old man's place.
When they were on the street he handed her into a phaeton, which
he drove himself, and they were whirled away by two superb
horses.
We returned to Prudence's box, and when the play was over we took
a cab and drove to 7, Rue d'Antin. At the door, Prudence asked us
to come up and see her showrooms, which we had never seen, and of
which she seemed very proud. You can imagine how eagerly I
accepted. It seemed to me as if I was coming nearer and nearer to
Marguerite. I soon turned the conversation in her direction.
"The old duke is at your neighbours," I said to Prudence.
"Oh, no; she is probably alone."
"But she must be dreadfully bored," said Gaston.
"We spend most of our evening together, or she calls to me when
she comes in. She never goes to bed before two in the morning.
She can't sleep before that."
"Why?"
"Because she suffers in the chest, and is almost always
feverish."
"Hasn't she any lovers?" I asked.
"I never see any one remain after I leave; I don't say no one
ever comes when I am gone. Often in the evening I meet there a
certain Comte de N., who thinks he is making some headway by
calling on her at eleven in the evening, and by sending her
jewels to any extent; but she can't stand him. She makes a
mistake; he is very rich. It is in vain that I say to her from
time to time, 'My dear child, there's the man for you.' She, who
generally listens to me, turns her back and replies that he is
too stupid. Stupid, indeed, he is; but it would be a position for
her, while this old duke might die any day. Old men are egoists;
his family are always reproaching him for his affection for
Marguerite; there are two reasons why he is likely to leave her
nothing. I give her good advice, and she only says it will be
plenty of time to take on the count when the duke is dead. It
isn't all fun," continued Prudence, "to live like that. I know
very well it wouldn't suit me, and I should soon send the old man
about his business. He is so dull; he calls her his daughter;
looks after her like a child; and is always in the way. I am sure
at this very moment one of his servants is prowling about in the
street to see who comes out, and especially who goes in."
"Ah, poor Marguerite!" said Gaston, sitting down to the piano and
playing a waltz. "I hadn't a notion of it, but I did notice she
hasn't been looking so gay lately."
"Hush," said Prudence, listening. Gaston stopped.
"She is calling me, I think."
We listened. A voice was calling, "Prudence!"
"Come, now, you must go," said Mme. Duvernoy.
"Ah, that is your idea of hospitality," said Gaston, laughing;
"we won't go till we please."
"Why should we go?"
"I am going over to Marguerite's."
"We will wait here."
"You can't."
"Then we will go with you."
"That still less."
"I know Marguerite," said Gaston; I can very well pay her a
call."
"But Armand doesn't know her."
"I will introduce him."
"Impossible."
We again heard Marguerite's voice calling to Prudence, who rushed
to her dressing-room window. I followed with Gaston as she opened
the window. We hid ourselves so as not to be seen from outside.
"I have been calling you for ten minutes," said Marguerite from
her window, in almost an imperious tone of voice.
"What do you want?"
"I want you to come over at once."
"Why?"
"Because the Comte de N. is still here, and he is boring me to
death."
"I can't now."
"What is hindering you?"
"There are two young fellows here who won't go."
"Tell them that you must go out."
"I have told them."
"Well, then, leave them in the house. They will soon go when they
see you have gone."
"They will turn everything upside down."
"But what do they want?"
"They want to see you."
"What are they called?"
"You know one, M. Gaston R."
"Ah, yes, I know him. And the other?"
"M. Armand Duval; and you don't know him."
"No, but bring them along. Anything is better than the count. I
expect you. Come at once."
Marguerite closed her window and Prudence hers. Marguerite, who
had remembered my face for a moment, did not remember my name. I
would rather have been remembered to my disadvantage than thus
forgotten.
"I knew," said Gaston, "that she would be delighted to see us."
"Delighted isn't the word," replied Prudence, as she put on her
hat and shawl. "She will see you in order to get rid of the
count. Try to be more agreeable than he is, or (I know
Marguerite) she will put it all down to me."
We followed Prudence downstairs. I trembled; it seemed to me that
this visit was to have a great influence on my life. I was still
more agitated than on the evening when I was introduced in the
box at the Opera Comique. As we reached the door that you know,
my heart beat so violently that I was hardly able to think.
We heard the sound of a piano. Prudence rang. The piano was
silent. A woman who looked more like a companion than a servant
opened the door. We went into the drawing-room, and from that to
the boudoir, which was then just as you have seen it since. A
young man was leaning against the mantel-piece. Marguerite,
seated at the piano, let her fingers wander over the notes,
beginning scraps of music without finishing them. The whole scene
breathed boredom, the man embarrassed by the consciousness of his
nullity, the woman tired of her dismal visitor. At the voice of
Prudence, Marguerite rose, and coming toward us with a look of
gratitude to Mme. Duvernoy, said:
"Come in, and welcome."
Chapter 9
"Good-evening, my dear Gaston," said Marguerite to my companion.
"I am very glad to see you. Why didn't you come to see me in my
box at the Varietes?"
"I was afraid it would be indiscreet."
"Friends," and Marguerite lingered over the word, as if to
intimate to those who were present that in spite of the familiar
way in which she greeted him, Gaston was not and never had been
anything more than a friend, "friends are always welcome."
"Then, will you permit me to introduce M. Armand Duval?"
"I had already authorized Prudence to do so."
"As far as that goes, madame," I said, bowing, and succeeding in
getting more or less intelligible sounds out of my throat, "I
have already had the honour of being introduced to you."
Marguerite's beautiful eyes seemed to be looking back in memory,
but she could not, or seemed not to, remember.
"Madame," I continued, "I am grateful to you for having forgotten
the occasion of my first introduction, for I was very absurd and
must have seemed to you very tiresome. It was at the Opera
Comique, two years ago; I was with Ernest de --."
"Ah, I remember," said Marguerite, with a smile. "It was not you
who were absurd; it was I who was mischievous, as I still am, but
somewhat less. You have forgiven me?"
And she held out her hand, which I kissed.
"It is true," she went on; "you know I have the bad habit of
trying to embarrass people the first time I meet them. It is very
stupid. My doctor says it is because I am nervous and always ill;
believe my doctor."
"But you seem quite well."
"Oh! I have been very ill."
"I know."
"Who told you?"
"Every one knew it; I often came to inquire after you, and I was
happy to hear of your convalescence."
"They never gave me your card."
"I did not leave it."
"Was it you, then, who called every day while I was ill, and
would never leave your name?"
"Yes, it was I."
"Then you are more than indulgent, you are generous. You, count,
wouldn't have done that," said she, turning toward M. de N.,
after giving me one of those looks in which women sum up their
opinion of a man.
"I have only known you for two months," replied the count.
"And this gentleman only for five minutes. You always say
something ridiculous."
Women are pitiless toward those whom they do not care for. The
count reddened and bit his lips.
I was sorry for him, for he seemed, like myself, to be in love,
and the bitter frankness of Marguerite must have made him very
unhappy, especially in the presence of two strangers.
"You were playing the piano when we came in," I said, in order to
change the conversation. "Won't you be so good as to treat me as
an old acquaintance and go on?"
"Oh," said she, flinging herself on the sofa and motioning to us
to sit down, "Gaston knows what my music is like. It is all very
well when I am alone with the count, but I won't inflict such a
punishment on you."
"You show me that preference?" said M. de N., with a smile which
he tried to render delicately ironical.
"Don't reproach me for it. It is the only one." It was fated that
the poor man was not to say a single word. He cast a really
supplicating glance at Marguerite.
"Well, Prudence," she went on, "have you done what I asked you to
do?"
"Yes.
"All right. You will tell me about it later. We must talk over
it; don't go before I can speak with you."
"We are doubtless intruders," I said, "and now that we, or rather
I, have had a second introduction, to blot out the first, it is
time for Gaston and me to be going."
"Not in the least. I didn't mean that for you. I want you to
stay."
The count took a very elegant watch out of his pocket and looked
at the time. "I must be going to my club," he said. Marguerite
did not answer. The count thereupon left his position by the
fireplace and going up to her, said: "Adieu, madame."
Marguerite rose. "Adieu, my dear count. Are you going already?"
"Yes, I fear I am boring you."
"You are not boring me to-day more than any other day. When shall
I be seeing you?"
"When you permit me."
"Good-bye, then."
It was cruel, you will admit. Fortunately, the count had
excellent manners and was very good-tempered. He merely kissed
Marguerite's hand, which she held out to him carelessly enough,
and, bowing to us, went out.
As he crossed the threshold, he cast a glance at Prudence. She
shrugged her shoulders, as much as to say:
"What do you expect? I have done all I could."
"Nanine!" cried Marguerite. "Light M. le Comte to the door."
We heard the door open and shut.
"At last," cried Marguerite, coming back, "he has gone! That man
gets frightfully on my nerves!"
"My dear child," said Prudence, "you really treat him too badly,
and he is so good and kind to you. Look at this watch on the
mantel-piece, that he gave you: it must have cost him at least
three thousand francs, I am sure."
And Mme. Duvernoy began to turn it over, as it lay on the
mantel-piece, looking at it with covetous eyes.
"My dear," said Marguerite, sitting down to the piano, "when I
put on one side what he gives me and on the other what he says to
me, it seems to me that he buys his visits very cheap."
"The poor fellow is in love with you."
"If I had to listen to everybody who was in love with me, I
shouldn't have time for my dinner."
And she began to run her fingers over the piano, and then,
turning to us, she said:
"What will you take? I think I should like a little punch."
"And I could eat a little chicken," said Prudence. "Suppose we
have supper?"
"That's it, let's go and have supper," said Gaston.
"No, we will have supper here."
She rang, and Nanine appeared.
"Send for some supper."
"What must I get?"
"Whatever you like, but at once, at once."
Nanine went out.
"That's it," said Marguerite, jumping like a child, "we'll have
supper. How tiresome that idiot of a count is!"
The more I saw her, the more she enchanted me. She was
exquisitely beautiful. Her slenderness was a charm. I was lost in
contemplation.
What was passing in my mind I should have some difficulty in
explaining. I was full of indulgence for her life, full of
admiration for her beauty. The proof of disinterestedness that
she gave in not accepting a rich and fashionable young man, ready
to waste all his money upon her, excused her in my eyes for all
her faults in the past.
There was a kind of candour in this woman. You could see she was
still in the virginity of vice. Her firm walk, her supple figure,
her rosy, open nostrils, her large eyes, slightly tinged with
blue, indicated one of those ardent natures which sbed around
them a sort of voluptuous perfume, like Eastern vials, which,
close them as tightly as you will, still let some of their
perfume escape. Finally, whether it was simple nature or a breath
of fever, there passed from time to time in the eyes of this
woman a glimmer of desire, giving promise of a very heaven for
one whom she should love. But those who had loved Marguerite were
not to be counted, nor those whom she had loved.
In this girl there was at once the virgin whom a mere nothing had
turned into a courtesan, and the courtesan whom a mere nothing
would have turned into the most loving and the purest of virgins.
Marguerite had still pride and independence, two sentiments
which, if they are wounded, can be the equivalent of a sense of
shame. I did not speak a word; my soul seemed to have passed into
my heart and my heart into my eyes.
"So," said she all at once, "it was you who came to inquire after
me when I was ill?"
"Yes."
"Do you know, it was quite splendid of you! How can I thank you
for it?"
"By allowing me to come and see you from time to time."
"As often as you like, from five to six, and from eleven to
twelve. Now, Gaston, play the Invitation A la Valse."
"Why?"
"To please me, first of all, and then because I never can manage
to play it myself."
"What part do you find difficult?"
"The third part, the part in sharps."
Gaston rose and went to the piano, and began to play the
wonderful melody of Weber, the music of which stood open before
him.
Marguerite, resting one hand on the piano, followed every note on
the music, accompanying it in a low voice, and when Gaston had
come to the passage which she had mentioned to him, she sang out,
running her fingers along the top of the piano:
"Do, re, mi, do, re, fa, mi, re; that is what I can not do. Over
again."
Gaston began over again, after which Marguerite said:
"Now, let me try."
She took her place and began to play; but her rebellious fingers
always came to grief over one of the notes.
"Isn't it incredible," she said, exactly like a child, "that I
can not succeed in playing that passage? Would you believe that I
sometimes spend two hours of the morning over it? And when I
think that that idiot of a count plays it without his music, and
beautifully, I really believe it is that that makes me so furious
with him." And she began again, always with the same result.
"The devil take Weber, music, and pianos!" she cried, throwing
the music to the other end of the room. "How can I play eight
sharps one after another?" She folded her arms and looked at us,
stamping her foot. The blood flew to her cheeks, and her lips
half opened in a slight cough.
"Come, come," said Prudence, who had taken off her hat and was
smoothing her hair before the glass, "you will work yourself into
a rage and do yourself harm. Better come and have supper; for my
part, I am dying of hunger."
Marguerite rang the bell, sat down to the piano again, and began
to hum over a very risky song, which she accompanied without
difficulty. Gaston knew the song, and they gave a sort of duet.
"Don't sing those beastly things," I said to Marguerite,
imploringly.
"Oh, how proper you are!" she said, smiling and giving me her
hand. "It is not for myself, but for you."
Marguerite made a gesture as if to say, "Oh, it is long since
that I have done with propriety!" At that moment Nanine appeared.
"Is supper ready?" asked Marguerite. "Yes, madame, in one
moment."
"Apropos," said Prudence to me, "you have not looked round; come,
and I will show you." As you know, the drawing-room was a marvel.
Marguerite went with us for a moment; then she called Gaston and
went into the dining-room with him to see if supper was ready.
"Ah," said Prudence, catching sight of a litt