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+Project Gutenberg's Camille (La Dame aux Camilias), by Alexandre Dumas, fils
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Camille (La Dame aux Camilias)
+
+Author: Alexandre Dumas, fils
+
+Posting Date: September 26, 2008 [EBook #1608]
+Release Date: January, 1999
+Last Updated: July 3, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAMILLE (LA DAME AUX CAMILIAS) ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dianne Bean
+
+
+
+
+
+CAMILLE (LA DAME AUX CAMILIAS)
+
+By Alexandre Dumas, fils
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 1
+
+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 no doubt 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, and 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
+someone 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 be 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 anyone had
+said to me, You shall have this woman to-night and be killed tomorrow, I
+would have accepted. If anyone 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 anyone 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 anyone 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 shed 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 little Saxe figure on a
+side-table, "I never knew you had this little gentleman."
+
+"Which?"
+
+"A little shepherd holding a bird-cage."
+
+"Take it, if you like it."
+
+
+"I won't deprive you of it."
+
+"I was going to give it to my maid. I think it hideous; but if you like
+it, take it."
+
+Prudence only saw the present, not the way in which it was given. She
+put the little figure on one side, and took me into the dressing-room,
+where she showed me two miniatures hanging side by side, and said:
+
+"That is the Comte de G., who was very much in love with Marguerite; it
+was he who brought her out. Do you know him?"
+
+"No. And this one?" I inquired, pointing to the other miniature.
+
+"That is the little Vicomte de L. He was obliged to disappear."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because he was all but ruined. That's one, if you like, who loved
+Marguerite."
+
+"And she loved him, too, no doubt?"
+
+"She is such a queer girl, one never knows. The night he went away
+she went to the theatre as usual, and yet she had cried when he said
+good-bye to her."
+
+Just then Nanine appeared, to tell us that supper was served.
+
+When we entered the dining-room, Marguerite was leaning against the
+wall, and Gaston, holding her hands, was speaking to her in a low voice.
+
+"You are mad," replied Marguerite. "You know quite well that I don't
+want you. It is no good at the end of two years to make love to a woman
+like me. With us, it is at once, or never. Come, gentlemen, supper!"
+
+And, slipping away from Gaston, Marguerite made him sit on her right at
+table, me on her left, then called to Nanine:
+
+"Before you sit down, tell them in the kitchen not to open to anybody if
+there is a ring."
+
+This order was given at one o'clock in the morning.
+
+We laughed, drank, and ate freely at this supper. In a short while mirth
+had reached its last limit, and the words that seem funny to a certain
+class of people, words that degrade the mouth that utters them, were
+heard from time to time, amidst the applause of Nanine, of Prudence, and
+of Marguerite. Gaston was thoroughly amused; he was a very good sort of
+fellow, but somewhat spoiled by the habits of his youth. For a moment
+I tried to forget myself, to force my heart and my thoughts to become
+indifferent to the sight before me, and to take my share of that gaiety
+which seemed like one of the courses of the meal. But little by little
+I withdrew from the noise; my glass remained full, and I felt almost
+sad as I saw this beautiful creature of twenty drinking, talking like a
+porter, and laughing the more loudly the more scandalous was the joke.
+
+Nevertheless, this hilarity, this way of talking and drinking, which
+seemed to me in the others the mere results of bad company or of bad
+habits, seemed in Marguerite a necessity of forgetting, a fever, a
+nervous irritability. At every glass of champagne her cheeks would flush
+with a feverish colour, and a cough, hardly perceptible at the beginning
+of supper, became at last so violent that she was obliged to lean her
+head on the back of her chair and hold her chest in her hands every time
+that she coughed. I suffered at the thought of the injury to so frail a
+constitution which must come from daily excesses like this. At length,
+something which I had feared and foreseen happened. Toward the end of
+supper Marguerite was seized by a more violent fit of coughing than any
+she had had while I was there. It seemed as if her chest were being torn
+in two. The poor girl turned crimson, closed her eyes under the pain,
+and put her napkin to her lips. It was stained with a drop of blood. She
+rose and ran into her dressing-room.
+
+"What is the matter with Marguerite?" asked Gaston.
+
+"She has been laughing too much, and she is spitting blood. Oh, it is
+nothing; it happens to her every day. She will be back in a minute.
+Leave her alone. She prefers it."
+
+I could not stay still; and, to the consternation of Prudence and
+Nanine, who called to me to come back, I followed Marguerite.
+
+
+
+Chapter 10
+
+The room to which she had fled was lit only by a single candle. She lay
+back on a great sofa, her dress undone, holding one hand on her heart,
+and letting the other hang by her side. On the table was a basin half
+full of water, and the water was stained with streaks of blood.
+
+Very pale, her mouth half open, Marguerite tried to recover breath. Now
+and again her bosom was raised by a long sigh, which seemed to
+relieve her a little, and for a few seconds she would seem to be quite
+comfortable.
+
+I went up to her; she made no movement, and I sat down and took the hand
+which was lying on the sofa.
+
+"Ah! it is you," she said, with a smile.
+
+I must have looked greatly agitated, for she added:
+
+"Are you unwell, too?"
+
+"No, but you: do you still suffer?"
+
+"Very little;" and she wiped off with her handkerchief the tears which
+the coughing had brought to her eyes; "I am used to it now."
+
+"You are killing yourself, madame," I said to her in a moved voice. "I
+wish I were a friend, a relation of yours, that I might keep you from
+doing yourself harm like this."
+
+"Ah! it is really not worth your while to alarm yourself," she replied
+in a somewhat bitter tone; "see how much notice the others take of me!
+They know too well that there is nothing to be done."
+
+Thereupon she got up, and, taking the candle, put it on the mantel-piece
+and looked at herself in the glass.
+
+"How pale I am!" she said, as she fastened her dress and passed her
+fingers over her loosened hair. "Come, let us go back to supper. Are you
+coming?"
+
+I sat still and did not move.
+
+She saw how deeply I had been affected by the whole scene, and, coming
+up to me, held out her hand, saying:
+
+"Come now, let us go."
+
+I took her hand, raised it to my lips, and in spite of myself two tears
+fell upon it.
+
+"Why, what a child you are!" she said, sitting down by my side again.
+"You are crying! What is the matter?"
+
+"I must seem very silly to you, but I am frightfully troubled by what I
+have just seen."
+
+"You are very good! What would you have of me? I can not sleep. I must
+amuse myself a little. And then, girls like me, what does it matter, one
+more or less? The doctors tell me that the blood I spit up comes from my
+throat; I pretend to believe them; it is all I can do for them."
+
+"Listen, Marguerite," I said, unable to contain myself any longer; "I do
+not know what influence you are going to have over my life, but at this
+present moment there is no one, not even my sister, in whom I feel the
+interest which I feel in you. It has been just the same ever since I saw
+you. Well, for Heaven's sake, take care of yourself, and do not live as
+you are living now."
+
+"If I took care of myself I should die. All that supports me is the
+feverish life I lead. Then, as for taking care of oneself, that is
+all very well for women with families and friends; as for us, from the
+moment we can no longer serve the vanity or the pleasure of our lovers,
+they leave us, and long nights follow long days. I know it. I was in bed
+for two months, and after three weeks no one came to see me."
+
+"It is true I am nothing to you," I went on, "but if you will let me, I
+will look after you like a brother, I will never leave your side, and I
+will cure you. Then, when you are strong again, you can go back to the
+life you are leading, if you choose; but I am sure you will come to
+prefer a quiet life, which will make you happier and keep your beauty
+unspoiled."
+
+"You think like that to-night because the wine has made you sad, but you
+would never have the patience that you pretend to."
+
+"Permit me to say, Marguerite, that you were ill for two months, and
+that for two months I came to ask after you every day."
+
+"It is true, but why did you not come up?"
+
+"Because I did not know you then."
+
+"Need you have been so particular with a girl like me?"
+
+"One must always be particular with a woman; it is what I feel, at
+least."
+
+"So you would look after me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You would stay by me all day?"
+
+"Yes.
+
+"And even all night?"
+
+"As long as I did not weary you."
+
+"And what do you call that?"
+
+"Devotion."
+
+"And what does this devotion come from?"
+
+"The irresistible sympathy which I have for you."
+
+"So you are in love with me? Say it straight out, it is much more
+simple."
+
+"It is possible; but if I am to say it to you one day, it is not
+to-day."
+
+"You will do better never to say it."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because only one of two things can come of it."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Either I shall not accept: then you will have a grudge against me; or
+I shall accept: then you will have a sorry mistress; a woman who is
+nervous, ill, sad, or gay with a gaiety sadder than grief, a woman who
+spits blood and spends a hundred thousand francs a year. That is all
+very well for a rich old man like the duke, but it is very bad for a
+young man like you, and the proof of it is that all the young lovers
+I have had have very soon left me." I did not answer; I listened. This
+frankness, which was almost a kind of confession, the sad life, of which
+I caught some glimpse through the golden veil which covered it, and
+whose reality the poor girl sought to escape in dissipation, drink,
+and wakefulness, impressed me so deeply that I could not utter a single
+word.
+
+"Come," continued Marguerite, "we are talking mere childishness. Give me
+your arm and let us go back to the dining-room. They won't know what we
+mean by our absence."
+
+"Go in, if you like, but allow me to stay here."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because your mirth hurts me."
+
+"Well, I will be sad."
+
+"Marguerite, let me say to you something which you have no doubt often
+heard, so often that the habit of hearing it has made you believe it no
+longer, but which is none the less real, and which I will never repeat."
+
+"And that is...?" she said, with the smile of a young mother listening
+to some foolish notion of her child.
+
+"It is this, that ever since I have seen you, I know not why, you have
+taken a place in my life; that, if I drive the thought of you out of my
+mind, it always comes back; that when I met you to-day, after not having
+seen you for two years, you made a deeper impression on my heart and
+mind than ever; that, now that you have let me come to see you, now that
+I know you, now that I know all that is strange in you, you have become
+a necessity of my life, and you will drive me mad, not only if you will
+not love me, but if you will not let me love you."
+
+"But, foolish creature that you are, I shall say to you, like Mme. D.,
+'You must be very rich, then!' Why, you don't know that I spend six or
+seven thousand francs a month, and that I could not live without it; you
+don't know, my poor friend, that I should ruin you in no time, and that
+your family would cast you off if you were to live with a woman like me.
+Let us be friends, good friends, but no more. Come and see me, we will
+laugh and talk, but don't exaggerate what I am worth, for I am worth
+very little. You have a good heart, you want someone to love you, you
+are too young and too sensitive to live in a world like mine. Take a
+married woman. You see, I speak to you frankly, like a friend."
+
+"But what the devil are you doing there?" cried Prudence, who had come
+in without our bearing her, and who now stood just inside the door, with
+her hair half coming down and her dress undone. I recognised the hand of
+Gaston.
+
+"We are talking sense," said Marguerite; "leave us alone; we will be
+back soon."
+
+"Good, good! Talk, my children," said Prudence, going out and closing
+the door behind her, as if to further emphasize the tone in which she
+had said these words.
+
+"Well, it is agreed," continued Marguerite, when we were alone, "you
+won't fall in love with me?"
+
+"I will go away."
+
+"So much as that?"
+
+I had gone too far to draw back; and I was really carried away. This
+mingling of gaiety, sadness, candour, prostitution, her very malady,
+which no doubt developed in her a sensitiveness to impressions, as well
+as an irritability of nerves, all this made it clear to me that if from
+the very beginning I did not completely dominate her light and forgetful
+nature, she was lost to me.
+
+"Come, now, do you seriously mean what you say?" she said.
+
+"Seriously."
+
+"But why didn't you say it to me sooner?"
+
+"When could I have said it?"
+
+"The day after you had been introduced to me at the Opera Comique."
+
+"I thought you would have received me very badly if I had come to see
+you."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I had behaved so stupidly."
+
+"That's true. And yet you were already in love with me."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And that didn't hinder you from going to bed and sleeping quite
+comfortably. One knows what that sort of love means."
+
+"There you are mistaken. Do you know what I did that evening, after the
+Opera Comique?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I waited for you at the door of the Cafe Anglais. I followed the
+carriage in which you and your three friends were, and when I saw you
+were the only one to get down, and that you went in alone, I was very
+happy."
+
+Marguerite began to laugh.
+
+"What are you laughing at?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Tell me, I beg of you, or I shall think you are still laughing at me."
+
+"You won't be cross?"
+
+"What right have I to be cross?"
+
+"Well, there was a sufficient reason why I went in alone."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Some one was waiting for me here."
+
+If she had thrust a knife into me she would not have hurt me more. I
+rose, and holding out my hand, "Goodbye," said I.
+
+"I knew you would be cross," she said; "men are frantic to know what is
+certain to give them pain."
+
+"But I assure you," I added coldly, as if wishing to prove how
+completely I was cured of my passion, "I assure you that I am not cross.
+It was quite natural that someone should be waiting for you, just as it
+is quite natural that I should go from here at three in the morning."
+
+"Have you, too, someone waiting for you?"
+
+"No, but I must go."
+
+"Good-bye, then."
+
+"You send me away?"
+
+"Not the least in the world."
+
+"Why are you so unkind to me?"
+
+"How have I been unkind to you?"
+
+"In telling me that someone was waiting for you."
+
+"I could not help laughing at the idea that you had been so happy to see
+me come in alone when there was such a good reason for it."
+
+"One finds pleasure in childish enough things, and it is too bad to
+destroy such a pleasure when, by simply leaving it alone, one can make
+somebody so happy."
+
+"But what do you think I am? I am neither maid nor duchess. I didn't
+know you till to-day, and I am not responsible to you for my actions.
+Supposing one day I should become your mistress, you are bound to know
+that I have had other lovers besides you. If you make scenes of jealousy
+like this before, what will it be after, if that after should ever
+exist? I never met anyone like you."
+
+"That is because no one has ever loved you as I love you."
+
+"Frankly, then, you really love me?"
+
+"As much as it is possible to love, I think."
+
+"And that has lasted since--?"
+
+"Since the day I saw you go into Susse's, three years ago."
+
+"Do you know, that is tremendously fine? Well, what am to do in return?"
+
+"Love me a little," I said, my heart beating so that I could hardly
+speak; for, in spite of the half-mocking smiles with which she had
+accompanied the whole conversation, it seemed to me that Marguerite
+began to share my agitation, and that the hour so long awaited was
+drawing near.
+
+"Well, but the duke?"
+
+"What duke?"
+
+"My jealous old duke."
+
+"He will know nothing."
+
+"And if he should?"
+
+"He would forgive you."
+
+"Ah, no, he would leave me, and what would become of me?"
+
+"You risk that for someone else."
+
+"How do you know?" "By the order you gave not to admit anyone
+to-night." "It is true; but that is a serious friend."
+
+"For whom you care nothing, as you have shut your door against him at
+such an hour."
+
+"It is not for you to reproach me, since it was in order to receive you,
+you and your friend."
+
+Little by little I had drawn nearer to Marguerite. I had put my arms
+about her waist, and I felt her supple body weigh lightly on my clasped
+hands.
+
+"If you knew how much I love you!" I said in a low voice. "Really true?"
+
+"I swear it."
+
+"Well, if you will promise to do everything I tell you, without a word,
+without an opinion, without a question, perhaps I will say yes."
+
+"I will do everything that you wish!"
+
+"But I forewarn you I must be free to do as I please, without giving you
+the slightest details what I do. I have long wished for a young lover,
+who should be young and not self-willed, loving without distrust, loved
+without claiming the right to it. I have never found one. Men, instead
+of being satisfied in obtaining for a long time what they scarcely
+hoped to obtain once, exact from their mistresses a full account of the
+present, the past, and even the future. As they get accustomed to her,
+they want to rule her, and the more one gives them the more exacting
+they become. If I decide now on taking a new lover, he must have three
+very rare qualities: he must be confiding, submissive, and discreet."
+
+"Well, I will be all that you wish."
+
+"We shall see."
+
+"When shall we see?"
+
+"Later on."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because," said Marguerite, releasing herself from my arms, and, taking
+from a great bunch of red camellias a single camellia, she placed it in
+my buttonhole, "because one can not always carry out agreements the day
+they are signed."
+
+"And when shall I see you again?" I said, clasping her in my arms.
+
+"When this camellia changes colour."
+
+"When will it change colour?"
+
+"To-morrow night between eleven and twelve. Are you satisfied?"
+
+"Need you ask me?"
+
+"Not a word of this either to your friend or to Prudence, or to anybody
+whatever."
+
+"I promise."
+
+"Now, kiss me, and we will go back to the dining-room."
+
+She held up her lips to me, smoothed her hair again, and we went out of
+the room, she singing, and I almost beside myself.
+
+In the next room she stopped for a moment and said to me in a low voice:
+
+"It must seem strange to you that I am ready to take you at a moment's
+notice. Shall I tell you why? It is," she continued, taking my hand
+and placing it against her heart so that I could feel how rapidly and
+violently it palpitated; "it is because I shall not live as long as
+others, and I have promised myself to live more quickly."
+
+"Don't speak to me like that, I entreat you."
+
+"Oh, make yourself easy," she continued, laughing; "however short a time
+I have to live, I shall live longer than you will love me!"
+
+And she went singing into the dining-room.
+
+"Where is Nanine?" she said, seeing Gaston and Prudence alone.
+
+"She is asleep in your room, waiting till you are ready to go to bed,"
+replied Prudence.
+
+"Poor thing, I am killing her! And now gentlemen, it is time to go."
+
+Ten minutes after, Gaston and I left the house. Marguerite shook hands
+with me and said good-bye. Prudence remained behind.
+
+"Well," said Gaston, when we were in the street, "what do you think of
+Marguerite?"
+
+"She is an angel, and I am madly in love with her." "So I guessed; did
+you tell her so?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And did she promise to believe you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"She is not like Prudence."
+
+"Did she promise to?"
+
+"Better still, my dear fellow. You wouldn't think it; but she is still
+not half bad, poor old Duvernoy!"
+
+
+
+Chapter 11
+
+At this point Armand stopped.
+
+"Would you close the window for me?" he said. "I am beginning to feel
+cold. Meanwhile, I will get into bed."
+
+I closed the window. Armand, who was still very weak, took off his
+dressing-gown and lay down in bed, resting his head for a few moments
+on the pillow, like a man who is tired by much talking or disturbed by
+painful memories.
+
+"Perhaps you have been talking too much," I said to him. "Would you
+rather for me to go and leave you to sleep? You can tell me the rest of
+the story another day."
+
+"Are you tired of listening to it?"
+
+"Quite the contrary."
+
+"Then I will go on. If you left me alone, I should not sleep."
+
+When I returned home (he continued, without needing to pause and
+recollect himself, so fresh were all the details in his mind), I did not
+go to bed, but began to reflect over the day's adventure. The meeting,
+the introduction, the promise of Marguerite, had followed one another so
+rapidly, and so unexpectedly, that there were moments when it seemed to
+me I had been dreaming. Nevertheless, it was not the first time that a
+girl like Marguerite had promised herself to a man on the morrow of the
+day on which he had asked for the promise.
+
+Though, indeed, I made this reflection, the first impression produced
+on me by my future mistress was so strong that it still persisted. I
+refused obstinately to see in her a woman like other women, and, with
+the vanity so common to all men, I was ready to believe that she could
+not but share the attraction which drew me to her.
+
+Yet, I had before me plenty of instances to the contrary, and I had
+often heard that the affection of Marguerite was a thing to be had more
+or less dear, according to the season.
+
+But, on the other hand, how was I to reconcile this reputation with her
+constant refusal of the young count whom we had found at her house? You
+may say that he was unattractive to her, and that, as she was splendidly
+kept by the duke, she would be more likely to choose a man who was
+attractive to her, if she were to take another lover. If so, why did she
+not choose Gaston, who was rich, witty, and charming, and why did she
+care for me, whom she had thought so ridiculous the first time she had
+seen me?
+
+It is true that there are events of a moment which tell more than the
+courtship of a year. Of those who were at the supper, I was the only one
+who had been concerned at her leaving the table. I had followed her, I
+had been so affected as to be unable to hide it from her, I had wept as
+I kissed her hand. This circumstance, added to my daily visits during
+the two months of her illness, might have shown her that I was somewhat
+different from the other men she knew, and perhaps she had said to
+herself that for a love which could thus manifest itself she might well
+do what she had done so often that it had no more consequence for her.
+
+All these suppositions, as you may see, were improbable enough; but
+whatever might have been the reason of her consent, one thing was
+certain, she had consented.
+
+Now, I was in love with Marguerite. I had nothing more to ask of her.
+Nevertheless, though she was only a kept woman, I had so anticipated for
+myself, perhaps to poetize it a little, a hopeless love, that the nearer
+the moment approached when I should have nothing more to hope, the more
+I doubted. I did not close my eyes all night.
+
+I scarcely knew myself. I was half demented. Now, I seemed to myself not
+handsome or rich or elegant enough to possess such a woman, now I was
+filled with vanity at the thought of it; then I began to fear lest
+Marguerite had no more than a few days' caprice for me, and I said to
+myself that since we should soon have to part, it would be better not to
+keep her appointment, but to write and tell her my fears and leave her.
+From that I went on to unlimited hope, unbounded confidence. I dreamed
+incredible dreams of the future; I said to myself that she should owe
+to me her moral and physical recovery, that I should spend my whole life
+with her, and that her love should make me happier than all the maidenly
+loves in the world.
+
+But I can not repeat to you the thousand thoughts that rose from my
+heart to my head, and that only faded away with the sleep that came to
+me at daybreak.
+
+When I awoke it was two o'clock. The weather was superb. I don't think
+life ever seemed to me so beautiful and so full of possibilities. The
+memories of the night before came to me without shadow or hindrance,
+escorted gaily by the hopes of the night to come. From time to time my
+heart leaped with love and joy in my breast. A sweet fever thrilled
+me. I thought no more of the reasons which had filled my mind before I
+slept. I saw only the result, I thought only of the hour when I was to
+see Marguerite again.
+
+It was impossible to stay indoors. My room seemed too small to contain
+my happiness. I needed the whole of nature to unbosom myself.
+
+I went out. Passing by the Rue d'Antin, I saw Marguerite's coupe'
+waiting for her at the door. I went toward the Champs-Elysees. I loved
+all the people whom I met. Love gives one a kind of goodness.
+
+After I had been walking for an hour from the Marly horses to the
+Rond-Point, I saw Marguerite's carriage in the distance; I divined
+rather than recognised it. As it was turning the corner of the
+Champs-Elysees it stopped, and a tall young man left a group of people
+with whom he was talking and came up to her. They talked for a few
+moments; the young man returned to his friends, the horses set out
+again, and as I came near the group I recognised the one who had spoken
+to Marguerite as the Comte de G., whose portrait I had seen and whom
+Prudence had indicated to me as the man to whom Marguerite owed her
+position. It was to him that she had closed her doors the night before;
+I imagined that she had stopped her carriage in order to explain to him
+why she had done so, and I hoped that at the same time she had found
+some new pretext for not receiving him on the following night.
+
+How I spent the rest of the day I do not know; I walked, smoked, talked,
+but what I said, whom I met, I had utterly forgotten by ten o'clock in
+the evening.
+
+All I remember is that when I returned home, I spent three hours over
+my toilet, and I looked at my watch and my clock a hundred times, which
+unfortunately both pointed to the same hour.
+
+When it struck half past ten, I said to myself that it was time to go.
+
+I lived at that time in the Rue de Provence; I followed the Rue du
+Mont-Blanc, crossed the Boulevard, went up the Rue Louis-le-Grand, the
+Rue de Port-Mahon, and the Rue d'Antin. I looked up at Marguerite's
+windows. There was a light. I rang. I asked the porter if Mlle. Gautier
+was at home. He replied that she never came in before eleven or a
+quarter past eleven. I looked at my watch. I intended to come quite
+slowly, and I had come in five minutes from the Rue de Provence to the
+Rue d'Antin.
+
+I walked to and fro in the street; there are no shops, and at that hour
+it is quite deserted. In half an hour's time Marguerite arrived. She
+looked around her as she got down from her coupe, as if she were
+looking for someone. The carriage drove off; the stables were not at
+the house. Just as Marguerite was going to ring, I went up to her and
+said, "Good-evening."
+
+"Ah, it is you," she said, in a tone that by no means reassured me as to
+her pleasure in seeing me.
+
+"Did you not promise me that I might come and see you to-day?"
+
+"Quite right. I had forgotten."
+
+This word upset all the reflections I had had during the day.
+Nevertheless, I was beginning to get used to her ways, and I did not
+leave her, as I should certainly have done once. We entered. Nanine had
+already opened the door.
+
+"Has Prudence come?" said Marguerite.
+
+"No, madame."
+
+"Say that she is to be admitted as soon as she comes. But first put out
+the lamp in the drawing-room, and if anyone comes, say that I have not
+come back and shall not be coming back."
+
+She was like a woman who is preoccupied with something, and perhaps
+annoyed by an unwelcome guest. I did not know what to do or say.
+Marguerite went toward her bedroom; I remained where I was.
+
+"Come," she said.
+
+She took off her hat and her velvet cloak and threw them on the bed,
+then let herself drop into a great armchair beside the fire, which she
+kept till the very beginning of summer, and said to me as she fingered
+her watch-chain:
+
+"Well, what news have you got for me?"
+
+"None, except that I ought not to have come to-night."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you seem vexed, and no doubt I am boring you."
+
+"You are not boring me; only I am not well; I have been suffering all
+day. I could not sleep, and I have a frightful headache."
+
+"Shall I go away and let you go to bed?"
+
+"Oh, you can stay. If I want to go to bed I don't mind your being here."
+
+At that moment there was a ring.
+
+"Who is coming now?" she said, with an impatient movement.
+
+A few minutes after there was another ring.
+
+"Isn't there anyone to go to the door? I shall have to go." She got up
+and said to me, "Wait here."
+
+She went through the rooms, and I heard her open the outer door. I
+listened.
+
+The person whom she had admitted did not come farther than the
+dining-room. At the first word I recognised the voice of the young Comte
+de N.
+
+"How are you this evening?" he said.
+
+"Not well," replied Marguerite drily.
+
+"Am I disturbing you?"
+
+"Perhaps.
+
+"How you receive me! What have I done, my dear Marguerite?"
+
+"My dear friend, you have done nothing. I am ill; I must go to bed, so
+you will be good enough to go. It is sickening not to be able to return
+at night without your making your appearance five minutes afterward.
+What is it you want? For me to be your mistress? Well, I have already
+told you a hundred times, No; you simply worry me, and you might as well
+go somewhere else. I repeat to you to-day, for the last time, I don't
+want to have anything to do with you; that's settled. Good-bye. Here's
+Nanine coming in; she can light you to the door. Good-night."
+
+Without adding another word, or listening to what the young man
+stammered out, Marguerite returned to the room and slammed the door.
+Nanine entered a moment after.
+
+"Now understand," said Marguerite, "you are always to say to that idiot
+that I am not in, or that I will not see him. I am tired out with seeing
+people who always want the same thing; who pay me for it, and then think
+they are quit of me. If those who are going to go in for our hateful
+business only knew what it really was they would sooner be chambermaids.
+But no, vanity, the desire of having dresses and carriages and diamonds
+carries us away; one believes what one hears, for here, as elsewhere,
+there is such a thing as belief, and one uses up one's heart, one's
+body, one's beauty, little by little; one is feared like a beast of
+prey, scorned like a pariah, surrounded by people who always take more
+than they give; and one fine day one dies like a dog in a ditch, after
+having ruined others and ruined one's self."
+
+"Come, come, madame, be calm," said Nanine; "your nerves are a bit upset
+to-night."
+
+"This dress worries me," continued Marguerite, unhooking her bodice;
+"give me a dressing-gown. Well, and Prudence?"
+
+"She has not come yet, but I will send her to you, madame, the moment
+she comes."
+
+"There's one, now," Marguerite went on, as she took off her dress and
+put on a white dressing-gown, "there's one who knows very well how to
+find me when she is in want of me, and yet she can't do me a service
+decently. She knows I am waiting for an answer. She knows how anxious I
+am, and I am sure she is going about on her own account, without giving
+a thought to me."
+
+"Perhaps she had to wait."
+
+"Let us have some punch."
+
+"It will do you no good, madame," said Nanine.
+
+"So much the better. Bring some fruit, too, and a pate or a wing of
+chicken; something or other, at once. I am hungry."
+
+Need I tell you the impression which this scene made upon me, or can you
+not imagine it?
+
+"You are going to have supper with me," she said to me; "meanwhile, take
+a book. I am going into my dressing-room for a moment."
+
+She lit the candles of a candelabra, opened a door at the foot of the
+bed, and disappeared.
+
+I began to think over this poor girl's life, and my love for her was
+mingled with a great pity. I walked to and fro in the room, thinking
+over things, when Prudence entered.
+
+"Ah, you here?"' she said, "where is Marguerite?"
+
+"In her dressing-room."
+
+"I will wait. By the way, do you know she thinks you charming?"
+
+"No."
+
+"She hasn't told you?"
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"How are you here?"
+
+"I have come to pay her a visit."
+
+"At midnight?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Farceur!"
+
+"She has received me, as a matter of fact, very badly."
+
+"She will receive you better by and bye."
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"I have some good news for her."
+
+"No harm in that. So she has spoken to you about me?"
+
+"Last night, or rather to-night, when you and your friend went. By the
+way, what is your friend called? Gaston R., his name is, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes," said I, not without smiling, as I thought of what Gaston had
+confided to me, and saw that Prudence scarcely even knew his name.
+
+"He is quite nice, that fellow; what does he do?"
+
+"He has twenty-five thousand francs a year."
+
+"Ah, indeed! Well, to return to you. Marguerite asked me all about
+you: who you were, what you did, what mistresses you had had; in short,
+everything that one could ask about a man of your age. I told her all I
+knew, and added that you were a charming young man. That's all."
+
+"Thanks. Now tell me what it was she wanted to say to you last night."
+
+"Nothing at all. It was only to get rid of the count; but I have really
+something to see her about to-day, and I am bringing her an answer now."
+
+At this moment Marguerite reappeared from her dressing-room, wearing a
+coquettish little nightcap with bunches of yellow ribbons, technically
+known as "cabbages." She looked ravishing. She had satin slippers on her
+bare feet, and was in the act of polishing her nails.
+
+"Well," she said, seeing Prudence, "have you seen the duke?"
+
+"Yes, indeed."
+
+"And what did he say to you?"
+
+"He gave me--"
+
+"How much?"
+
+"Six thousand."
+
+"Have you got it?"
+
+"Yes.
+
+"Did he seem put out?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Poor man!"
+
+This "Poor man!" was said in a tone impossible to render. Marguerite
+took the six notes of a thousand francs.
+
+"It was quite time," she said. "My dear Prudence, are you in want of any
+money?"
+
+"You know, my child, it is the 15th in a couple of days, so if you could
+lend me three or four hundred francs, you would do me a real service."
+
+"Send over to-morrow; it is too late to get change now."
+
+"Don't forget."
+
+"No fear. Will you have supper with us?"
+
+"No, Charles is waiting for me."
+
+"You are still devoted to him?"
+
+"Crazy, my dear! I will see you to-morrow. Good-bye, Armand."
+
+Mme. Duvernoy went out.
+
+Marguerite opened the drawer of a side-table and threw the bank-notes
+into it.
+
+"Will you permit me to get into bed?" she said with a smile, as she
+moved toward the bed.
+
+"Not only permit, but I beg of you."
+
+She turned back the covering and got into bed.
+
+"Now," said she, "come and sit down by me, and let's have a talk."
+
+Prudence was right: the answer that she had brought to Marguerite had
+put her into a good humour.
+
+"Will you forgive me for my bad temper tonight?" she said, taking my
+hand.
+
+"I am ready to forgive you as often as you like."
+
+"And you love me?"
+
+"Madly."
+
+"In spite of my bad disposition?"
+
+"In spite of all."
+
+"You swear it?"
+
+"Yes," I said in a whisper.
+
+Nanine entered, carrying plates, a cold chicken, a bottle of claret, and
+some strawberries.
+
+"I haven't had any punch made," said Nanine; "claret is better for you.
+Isn't it, sir?"
+
+"Certainly," I replied, still under the excitement of Marguerite's last
+words, my eyes fixed ardently upon her.
+
+"Good," said she; "put it all on the little table, and draw it up to the
+bed; we will help ourselves. This is the third night you have sat up,
+and you must be in want of sleep. Go to bed. I don't want anything
+more."
+
+"Shall I lock the door?"
+
+"I should think so! And above all, tell them not to admit anybody before
+midday."
+
+
+
+Chapter 12
+
+At five o'clock in the morning, as the light began to appear through the
+curtains, Marguerite said to me: "Forgive me if I send you away; but I
+must. The duke comes every morning; they will tell him, when he comes,
+that I am asleep, and perhaps he will wait until I wake."
+
+I took Marguerite's head in my hands; her loosened hair streamed about
+her; I gave her a last kiss, saying: "When shall I see you again?"
+
+"Listen," she said; "take the little gilt key on the mantelpiece, open
+that door; bring me back the key and go. In the course of the day
+you shall have a letter, and my orders, for you know you are to obey
+blindly."
+
+"Yes; but if I should already ask for something?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Let me have that key."
+
+"What you ask is a thing I have never done for anyone."
+
+"Well, do it for me, for I swear to you that I don't love you as the
+others have loved you."
+
+"Well, keep it; but it only depends on me to make it useless to you,
+after all."
+
+"How?"
+
+"There are bolts on the door."
+
+"Wretch!"
+
+"I will have them taken off."
+
+"You love, then, a little?"
+
+"I don't know how it is, but it seems to me as if I do! Now, go; I can't
+keep my eyes open."
+
+I held her in my arms for a few seconds and then went.
+
+The streets were empty, the great city was still asleep, a sweet
+freshness circulated in the streets that a few hours later would be
+filled with the noise of men. It seemed to me as if this sleeping
+city belonged to me; I searched my memory for the names of those whose
+happiness I had once envied; and I could not recall one without finding
+myself the happier.
+
+To be loved by a pure young girl, to be the first to reveal to her the
+strange mystery of love, is indeed a great happiness, but it is the
+simplest thing in the world. To take captive a heart which has had no
+experience of attack, is to enter an unfortified and ungarrisoned city.
+Education, family feeling, the sense of duty, the family, are strong
+sentinels, but there are no sentinels so vigilant as not to be deceived
+by a girl of sixteen to whom nature, by the voice of the man she loves,
+gives the first counsels of love, all the more ardent because they seem
+so pure.
+
+The more a girl believes in goodness, the more easily will she give way,
+if not to her lover, at least to love, for being without mistrust she
+is without force, and to win her love is a triumph that can be gained
+by any young man of five-and-twenty. See how young girls are watched
+and guarded! The walls of convents are not high enough, mothers have
+no locks strong enough, religion has no duties constant enough, to shut
+these charming birds in their cages, cages not even strewn with flowers.
+Then how surely must they desire the world which is hidden from them,
+how surely must they find it tempting, how surely must they listen to
+the first voice which comes to tell its secrets through their bars, and
+bless the hand which is the first to raise a corner of the mysterious
+veil!
+
+But to be really loved by a courtesan: that is a victory of infinitely
+greater difficulty. With them the body has worn out the soul, the senses
+have burned up the heart, dissipation has blunted the feelings. They
+have long known the words that we say to them, the means we use; they
+have sold the love that they inspire. They love by profession, and not
+by instinct. They are guarded better by their calculations than a virgin
+by her mother and her convent; and they have invented the word caprice
+for that unbartered love which they allow themselves from time to time,
+for a rest, for an excuse, for a consolation, like usurers, who cheat
+a thousand, and think they have bought their own redemption by once
+lending a sovereign to a poor devil who is dying of hunger without
+asking for interest or a receipt.
+
+Then, when God allows love to a courtesan, that love, which at first
+seems like a pardon, becomes for her almost without penitence. When a
+creature who has all her past to reproach herself with is taken all at
+once by a profound, sincere, irresistible love, of which she had never
+felt herself capable; when she has confessed her love, how absolutely
+the man whom she loves dominates her! How strong he feels with his cruel
+right to say: You do no more for love than you have done for money.
+They know not what proof to give. A child, says the fable, having
+often amused himself by crying "Help! a wolf!" in order to disturb the
+labourers in the field, was one day devoured by a Wolf, because those
+whom he had so often deceived no longer believed in his cries for help.
+It is the same with these unhappy women when they love seriously. They
+have lied so often that no one will believe them, and in the midst of
+their remorse they are devoured by their love.
+
+Hence those great devotions, those austere retreats from the world, of
+which some of them have given an example.
+
+But when the man who inspires this redeeming love is great enough in
+soul to receive it without remembering the past, when he gives himself
+up to it, when, in short, he loves as he is loved, this man drains at
+one draught all earthly emotions, and after such a love his heart will
+be closed to every other.
+
+I did not make these reflections on the morning when I returned home.
+They could but have been the presentiment of what was to happen to
+me, and, despite my love for Marguerite, I did not foresee such
+consequences. I make these reflections to-day. Now that all is
+irrevocably ended, they a rise naturally out of what has taken place.
+
+But to return to the first day of my liaison. When I reached home I
+was in a state of mad gaiety. As I thought of how the barriers which my
+imagination had placed between Marguerite and myself had disappeared, of
+how she was now mine; of the place I now had in her thoughts, of the key
+to her room which I had in my pocket, and of my right to use this key, I
+was satisfied with life, proud of myself, and I loved God because he had
+let such things be.
+
+One day a young man is passing in the street, he brushes against a
+woman, looks at her, turns, goes on his way. He does not know the woman,
+and she has pleasures, griefs, loves, in which he has no part. He does
+not exist for her, and perhaps, if he spoke to her, she would only laugh
+at him, as Marguerite had laughed at me. Weeks, months, years pass, and
+all at once, when they have each followed their fate along a different
+path, the logic of chance brings them face to face. The woman becomes
+the man's mistress and loves him. How? why? Their two existences are
+henceforth one; they have scarcely begun to know one another when it
+seems as if they had known one another always, and all that had gone
+before is wiped out from the memory of the two lovers. It is curious,
+one must admit.
+
+As for me, I no longer remembered how I had lived before that night.
+My whole being was exalted into joy at the memory of the words we had
+exchanged during that first night. Either Marguerite was very clever
+in deception, or she had conceived for me one of those sudden passions
+which are revealed in the first kiss, and which die, often enough, as
+suddenly as they were born.
+
+The more I reflected the more I said to myself that Marguerite had no
+reason for feigning a love which she did not feel, and I said to myself
+also that women have two ways of loving, one of which may arise from the
+other: they love with the heart or with the senses. Often a woman takes
+a lover in obedience to the mere will of the senses, and learns without
+expecting it the mystery of immaterial love, and lives henceforth only
+through her heart; often a girl who has sought in marriage only the
+union of two pure affections receives the sudden revelation of physical
+love, that energetic conclusion of the purest impressions of the soul.
+
+In the midst of these thoughts I fell asleep; I was awakened by a letter
+from Marguerite containing these words:
+
+"Here are my orders: To-night at the Vaudeville.
+
+"Come during the third entr'acte."
+
+I put the letter into a drawer, so that I might always have it at hand
+in case I doubted its reality, as I did from time to time.
+
+She did not tell me to come to see her during the day, and I dared not
+go; but I had so great a desire to see her before the evening that I
+went to the Champs-Elysees, where I again saw her pass and repass, as I
+had on the previous day.
+
+At seven o'clock I was at the Vaudeville. Never had I gone to a theatre
+so early. The boxes filled one after another. Only one remained empty,
+the stage box. At the beginning of the third act I heard the door of
+the box, on which my eyes had been almost constantly fixed, open, and
+Marguerite appeared. She came to the front at once, looked around the
+stalls, saw me, and thanked me with a look.
+
+That night she was marvellously beautiful. Was I the cause of this
+coquetry? Did she love me enough to believe that the more beautiful she
+looked the happier I should be? I did not know, but if that had been
+her intention she certainly succeeded, for when she appeared all heads
+turned, and the actor who was then on the stage looked to see who had
+produced such an effect on the audience by her mere presence there.
+
+And I had the key of this woman's room, and in three or four hours she
+would again be mine!
+
+People blame those who let themselves be ruined by actresses and kept
+women; what astonishes me is that twenty times greater follies are not
+committed for them. One must have lived that life, as I have, to know
+how much the little vanities which they afford their lovers every day
+help to fasten deeper into the heart, since we have no other word for
+it, the love which he has for them.
+
+Prudence next took her place in the box, and a man, whom I recognised as
+the Comte de G., seated himself at the back. As I saw him, a cold shiver
+went through my heart.
+
+Doubtless Marguerite perceived the impression made on me by the presence
+of this man, for she smiled to me again, and, turning her back to the
+count, appeared to be very attentive to the play. At the third entr'acte
+she turned and said two words: the count left the box, and Marguerite
+beckoned to me to come to her.
+
+"Good-evening," she said as I entered, holding out her hand.
+
+"Good-evening," I replied to both Marguerite and Prudence.
+
+"Sit down."
+
+"But I am taking someone's place. Isn't the Comte de G. coming back?"
+
+"Yes; I sent him to fetch some sweets, so that we could talk by
+ourselves for a moment. Mme. Duvernoy is in on the secret."
+
+"Yes, my children," said she; "have no fear. I shall say nothing."
+
+"What is the matter with you to-night?" said Marguerite, rising and
+coming to the back of the box and kissing me on the forehead.
+
+"I am not very well."
+
+"You should go to bed," she replied, with that ironical air which went
+so well with her delicate and witty face.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"At home."
+
+"You know that I shouldn't be able to sleep there."
+
+"Well, then, it won't do for you to come and be pettish here because you
+have seen a man in my box."
+
+"It is not for that reason."
+
+"Yes, it is. I know; and you are wrong, so let us say no more about
+it. You will go back with Prudence after the theatre, and you will stay
+there till I call. Do you understand?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+How could I disobey?
+
+"You still love me?"
+
+"Can you ask?"
+
+"You have thought of me?"
+
+"All day long."
+
+"Do you know that I am really afraid that I shall get very fond of you?
+Ask Prudence."
+
+"Ah," said she, "it is amazing!"
+
+"Now, you must go back to your seat. The count will be coming back, and
+there is nothing to be gained by his finding you here."
+
+"Because you don't like seeing him."
+
+"No; only if you had told me that you wanted to come to the Vaudeville
+to-night I could have got this box for you as well as he."
+
+"Unfortunately, he got it for me without my asking him, and he asked me
+to go with him; you know well enough that I couldn't refuse. All I could
+do was to write and tell you where I was going, so that you could see
+me, and because I wanted to see you myself; but since this is the way
+you thank me, I shall profit by the lesson."
+
+"I was wrong; forgive me."
+
+"Well and good; and now go back nicely to your place, and, above all, no
+more jealousy."
+
+She kissed me again, and I left the box. In the passage I met the count
+coming back. I returned to my seat.
+
+After all, the presence of M. de G. in Marguerite's box was the most
+natural thing in the world. He had been her lover, he sent her a box, he
+accompanied her to the theatre; it was all quite natural, and if I was
+to have a mistress like Marguerite I should have to get used to her
+ways.
+
+Nonetheless, I was very unhappy all the rest of the evening, and went
+away very sadly after having seen Prudence, the count, and Marguerite
+get into the carriage, which was waiting for them at the door.
+
+However, a quarter of an hour later I was at Prudence's. She had only
+just got in.
+
+
+
+Chapter 13
+
+"You have come almost as quickly as we," said Prudence.
+
+"Yes," I answered mechanically. "Where is Marguerite?"
+
+"At home."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+"With M. de G."
+
+I walked to and fro in the room.
+
+"Well, what is the matter?"
+
+"Do you think it amuses me to wait here till M. de G. leaves
+Marguerite's?"
+
+"How unreasonable you are! Don't you see that Marguerite can't turn the
+count out of doors? M. de G. has been with her for a long time; he has
+always given her a lot of money; he still does. Marguerite spends more
+than a hundred thousand francs a year; she has heaps of debts. The duke
+gives her all that she asks for, but she does not always venture to ask
+him for all that she is in want of. It would never do for her to quarrel
+with the count, who is worth to her at least ten thousand francs a year.
+Marguerite is very fond of you, my dear fellow, but your liaison with
+her, in her interests and in yours, ought not to be serious. You with
+your seven or eight thousand francs a year, what could you do toward
+supplying all the luxuries which a girl like that is in need of? It
+would not be enough to keep her carriage. Take Marguerite for what
+she is, for a good, bright, pretty girl; be her lover for a month, two
+months; give her flowers, sweets, boxes at the theatre; but don't
+get any other ideas into your head, and don't make absurd scenes of
+jealousy. You know whom you have to do with; Marguerite isn't a saint.
+She likes you, you are very fond of her; let the rest alone. You amaze
+me when I see you so touchy; you have the most charming mistress in
+Paris. She receives you in the greatest style, she is covered with
+diamonds, she needn't cost you a penny, unless you like, and you are not
+satisfied. My dear fellow, you ask too much!"
+
+"You are right, but I can't help it; the idea that that man is her lover
+hurts me horribly."
+
+"In the first place," replied Prudence; "is he still her lover? He is a
+man who is useful to her, nothing more. She has closed her doors to him
+for two days; he came this morning--she could not but accept the box and
+let him accompany her. He saw her home; he has gone in for a moment, he
+is not staying, because you are waiting here. All that, it seems to me,
+is quite natural. Besides, you don't mind the duke."
+
+"Yes; but he is an old man, and I am sure that Marguerite is not his
+mistress. Then, it is all very well to accept one liaison, but not two.
+Such easiness in the matter is very like calculation, and puts the man
+who consents to it, even out of love, very much in the category of those
+who, in a lower stage of society, make a trade of their connivance, and
+a profit of their trade."
+
+"Ah, my dear fellow, how old-fashioned you are! How many of the richest
+and most fashionable men of the best families I have seen quite ready
+to do what I advise you to do, and without an effort, without shame,
+without remorse, Why, one sees it every day. How do you suppose the kept
+women in Paris could live in the style they do, if they had not three or
+four lovers at once? No single fortune, however large, could suffice
+for the expenses of a woman like Marguerite. A fortune of five hundred
+thousand francs a year is, in France, an enormous fortune; well, my dear
+friend, five hundred thousand francs a year would still be too little,
+and for this reason: a man with such an income has a large house,
+horses, servants, carriages; he shoots, has friends, often he is
+married, he has children, he races, gambles, travels, and what not. All
+these habits are so much a part of his position that he can not forego
+them without appearing to have lost all his money, and without causing
+scandal. Taking it all round, with five hundred thousand francs a year
+he can not give a woman more than forty or fifty thousand francs in the
+year, and that is already a good deal. Well, other lovers make up for
+the rest of her expenses. With Marguerite, it is still more convenient;
+she has chanced by a miracle on an old man worth ten millions, whose
+wife and daughter are dead; who has only some nephews, themselves rich,
+and who gives her all she wants without asking anything in return. But
+she can not ask him for more than seventy thousand francs a year; and
+I am sure that if she did ask for more, despite his health and the
+affection he has for her he would not give it to her.
+
+"All the young men of twenty or thirty thousand francs a year at Paris,
+that is to say, men who have only just enough to live on in the society
+in which they mix, know perfectly well, when they are the lovers of a
+woman like Marguerite, that she could not so much as pay for the rooms
+she lives in and the servants who wait upon her with what they give
+her. They do not say to her that they know it; they pretend not to see
+anything, and when they have had enough of it they go their way. If they
+have the vanity to wish to pay for everything they get ruined, like the
+fools they are, and go and get killed in Africa, after leaving a hundred
+thousand francs of debt in Paris. Do you think a woman is grateful
+to them for it? Far from it. She declares that she has sacrificed her
+position for them, and that while she was with them she was losing
+money. These details seem to you shocking? Well, they are true. You are
+a very nice fellow; I like you very much. I have lived with these women
+for twenty years; I know what they are worth, and I don't want to see
+you take the caprice that a pretty girl has for you too seriously.
+
+"Then, besides that," continued Prudence; "admit that Marguerite loves
+you enough to give up the count or the duke, in case one of them were to
+discover your liaison and to tell her to choose between him and you,
+the sacrifice that she would make for you would be enormous, you can not
+deny it. What equal sacrifice could you make for her, on your part, and
+when you had got tired of her, what could you do to make up for what you
+had taken from her? Nothing. You would have cut her off from the world
+in which her fortune and her future were to be found; she would have
+given you her best years, and she would be forgotten. Either you would
+be an ordinary man, and, casting her past in her teeth, you would leave
+her, telling her that you were only doing like her other lovers, and you
+would abandon her to certain misery; or you would be an honest man, and,
+feeling bound to keep her by you, you would bring inevitable trouble
+upon yourself, for a liaison which is excusable in a young man, is no
+longer excusable in a man of middle age. It becomes an obstacle to every
+thing; it allows neither family nor ambition, man's second and last
+loves. Believe me, then, my friend, take things for what they are worth,
+and do not give a kept woman the right to call herself your creditor, no
+matter in what."
+
+It was well argued, with a logic of which I should have thought Prudence
+incapable. I had nothing to reply, except that she was right; I took her
+hand and thanked her for her counsels.
+
+"Come, come," said she, "put these foolish theories to flight, and
+laugh over them. Life is pleasant, my dear fellow; it all depends on the
+colour of the glass through which one sees it. Ask your friend Gaston;
+there's a man who seems to me to understand love as I understand it. All
+that you need think of, unless you are quite a fool, is that close by
+there is a beautiful girl who is waiting impatiently for the man who is
+with her to go, thinking of you, keeping the whole night for you, and
+who loves you, I am certain. Now, come to the window with me, and let us
+watch for the count to go; he won't be long in leaving the coast clear."
+
+Prudence opened the window, and we leaned side by side over the balcony.
+She watched the few passers, I reflected. All that she had said buzzed
+in my head, and I could not help feeling that she was right; but
+the genuine love which I had for Marguerite had some difficulty in
+accommodating itself to such a belief. I sighed from time to time, at
+which Prudence turned, and shrugged her shoulders like a physician who
+has given up his patient.
+
+"How one realizes the shortness of life," I said to myself, "by the
+rapidity of sensations! I have only known Marguerite for two days,
+she has only been my mistress since yesterday, and she has already so
+completely absorbed my thoughts, my heart, and my life that the visit of
+the Comte de G. is a misfortune for me."
+
+At last the count came out, got into his carriage and disappeared.
+Prudence closed the window. At the same instant Marguerite called to us:
+
+"Come at once," she said; "they are laying the table, and we'll have
+supper."
+
+When I entered, Marguerite ran to me, threw her arms around my neck and
+kissed me with all her might.
+
+"Are we still sulky?" she said to me.
+
+"No, it is all over," replied Prudence. "I have given him a talking to,
+and he has promised to be reasonable."
+
+"Well and good."
+
+In spite of myself I glanced at the bed; it was not unmade. As for
+Marguerite, she was already in her white dressing-gown. We sat down to
+table.
+
+Charm, sweetness, spontaneity, Marguerite had them all, and I was forced
+from time to time to admit that I had no right to ask of her anything
+else; that many people would be very happy to be in my place; and that,
+like Virgil's shepherd, I had only to enjoy the pleasures that a god, or
+rather a goddess, set before me.
+
+I tried to put in practice the theories of Prudence, and to be as gay
+as my two companions; but what was natural in them was on my part an
+effort, and the nervous laughter, whose source they did not detect, was
+nearer to tears than to mirth.
+
+At last the supper was over and I was alone with Marguerite. She sat
+down as usual on the hearthrug before the fire and gazed sadly into the
+flames. What was she thinking of? I know not. As for me, I looked at her
+with a mingling of love and terror, as I thought of all that I was ready
+to suffer for her sake.
+
+"Do you know what I am thinking of?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Of a plan that has come into my head."
+
+"And what is this plan?"
+
+"I can't tell you yet, but I can tell you what the result would be. The
+result would be that in a month I should be free, I should have no more
+debts, and we could go and spend the summer in the country."
+
+"And you can't tell me by what means?"
+
+"No, only love me as I love you, and all will succeed."
+
+"And have you made this plan all by yourself?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you will carry it out all by yourself?"
+
+"I alone shall have the trouble of it," said Marguerite, with a smile
+which I shall never forget, "but we shall both partake its benefits."
+
+I could not help flushing at the word benefits; I thought of Manon
+Lescaut squandering with Desgrieux the money of M. de B.
+
+I replied in a hard voice, rising from my seat:
+
+"You must permit me, my dear Marguerite, to share only the benefits of
+those enterprises which I have conceived and carried out myself."
+
+"What does that mean?"
+
+"It means that I have a strong suspicion that M. de G. is to be your
+associate in this pretty plan, of which I can accept neither the cost
+nor the benefits."
+
+"What a child you are! I thought you loved me. I was mistaken; all
+right."
+
+She rose, opened the piano and began to play the "Invitation a la Valse",
+as far as the famous passage in the major which always stopped her. Was
+it through force of habit, or was it to remind me of the day when we
+first met? All I know is that the melody brought back that recollection,
+and, coming up to her, I took her head between my hands and kissed her.
+"You forgive me?" I said.
+
+"You see I do," she answered; "but observe that we are only at our
+second day, and already I have had to forgive you something. Is this how
+you keep your promise of blind obedience?"
+
+"What can I do, Marguerite? I love you too much and I am jealous of the
+least of your thoughts. What you proposed to me just now made me frantic
+with delight, but the mystery in its carrying out hurts me dreadfully."
+
+"Come, let us reason it out," she said, taking both my hands and looking
+at me with a charming smile which it was impossible to resist, "You love
+me, do you not? and you would gladly spend two or three months alone
+with me in the country? I too should be glad of this solitude a deux,
+and not only glad of it, but my health requires it. I can not leave
+Paris for such a length of time without putting my affairs in order, and
+the affairs of a woman like me are always in great confusion; well, I
+have found a way to reconcile everything, my money affairs and my love
+for you; yes, for you, don't laugh; I am silly enough to love you! And
+here you are taking lordly airs and talking big words. Child, thrice
+child, only remember that I love you, and don't let anything disturb
+you. Now, is it agreed?"
+
+"I agree to all you wish, as you know."
+
+"Then, in less than a month's time we shall be in some village,
+walking by the river side, and drinking milk. Does it seem strange
+that Marguerite Gautier should speak to you like that? The fact is,
+my friend, that when this Paris life, which seems to make me so happy,
+doesn't burn me, it wearies me, and then I have sudden aspirations
+toward a calmer existence which might recall my childhood. One has
+always had a childhood, whatever one becomes. Don't be alarmed; I am not
+going to tell you that I am the daughter of a colonel on half-pay, and
+that I was brought up at Saint-Denis. I am a poor country girl, and six
+years ago I could not write my own name. You are relieved, aren't you?
+Why is it you are the first whom I have ever asked to share the joy
+of this desire of mine? I suppose because I feel that you love me for
+myself and not for yourself, while all the others have only loved me for
+themselves.
+
+"I have often been in the country, but never as I should like to go
+there. I count on you for this easy happiness; do not be unkind, let
+me have it. Say this to yourself: 'She will never live to be old, and I
+should some day be sorry for not having done for her the first thing she
+asked of me, such an easy thing to do!'"
+
+What could I reply to such words, especially with the memory of a first
+night of love, and in the expectation of a second?
+
+An hour later I held Marguerite in my arms, and, if she had asked me to
+commit a crime, I would have obeyed her.
+
+At six in the morning I left her, and before leaving her I said: "Till
+to-night!" She kissed me more warmly than ever, but said nothing.
+
+During the day I received a note containing these words:
+
+"DEAR CHILD: I am not very well, and the doctor has ordered quiet. I
+shall go to bed early to-night and shall not see you. But, to make up, I
+shall expect you to-morrow at twelve. I love you."
+
+My first thought was: She is deceiving me!
+
+A cold sweat broke out on my forehead, for I already loved this woman
+too much not to be overwhelmed by the suspicion. And yet, I was bound to
+expect such a thing almost any day with Marguerite, and it had happened
+to me often enough with my other mistresses, without my taking much
+notice of it. What was the meaning of the hold which this woman had
+taken upon my life?
+
+Then it occurred to me, since I had the key, to go and see her as usual.
+In this way I should soon know the truth, and if I found a man there I
+would strike him in the face.
+
+Meanwhile I went to the Champs-Elysees. I waited there four hours. She
+did not appear. At night I went into all the theatres where she was
+accustomed to go. She was in none of them.
+
+At eleven o'clock I went to the Rue d'Antin. There was no light in
+Marguerite's windows. All the same, I rang. The porter asked me where I
+was going.
+
+"To Mlle. Gautier's," I said.
+
+"She has not come in."
+
+"I will go up and wait for her."
+
+"There is no one there."
+
+Evidently I could get in, since I had the key, but, fearing foolish
+scandal, I went away. Only I did not return home; I could not leave the
+street, and I never took my eyes off Marguerite's house. It seemed to
+me that there was still something to be found out, or at least that my
+suspicions were about to be confirmed.
+
+About midnight a carriage that I knew well stopped before No. 9. The
+Comte de G. got down and entered the house, after sending away the
+carriage. For a moment I hoped that the same answer would be given to
+him as to me, and that I should see him come out; but at four o'clock in
+the morning I was still awaiting him.
+
+I have suffered deeply during these last three weeks, but that is
+nothing, I think, in comparison with what I suffered that night.
+
+
+
+Chapter 14
+
+When I reached home I began to cry like a child. There is no man to whom
+a woman has not been unfaithful, once at least, and who will not know
+what I suffered.
+
+I said to myself, under the weight of these feverish resolutions which
+one always feels as if one had the force to carry out, that I must break
+with my amour at once, and I waited impatiently for daylight in order
+to set out forthwith to rejoin my father and my sister, of whose love at
+least I was certain, and certain that that love would never be betrayed.
+
+However, I did not wish to go away without letting Marguerite know why
+I went. Only a man who really cares no more for his mistress leaves her
+without writing to her. I made and remade twenty letters in my head. I
+had had to do with a woman like all other women of the kind. I had been
+poetizing too much. She had treated me like a school-boy, she had used
+in deceiving me a trick which was insultingly simple. My self-esteem
+got the upper hand. I must leave this woman without giving her the
+satisfaction of knowing that she had made me suffer, and this is what I
+wrote to her in my most elegant handwriting and with tears of rage and
+sorrow in my eyes:
+
+"MY DEAR MARGUERITE: I hope that your indisposition yesterday was not
+serious. I came, at eleven at night, to ask after you, and was told
+that you had not come in. M. de G. was more fortunate, for he presented
+himself shortly afterward, and at four in the morning he had not left.
+
+"Forgive me for the few tedious hours that I have given you, and be
+assured that I shall never forget the happy moments which I owe to you.
+
+"I should have called to-day to ask after you, but I intend going back
+to my father's.
+
+"Good-bye, my dear Marguerite. I am not rich enough to love you as I
+would nor poor enough to love you as you would. Let us then forget, you
+a name which must be indifferent enough to you, I a happiness which has
+become impossible.
+
+"I send back your key, which I have never used, and which might be
+useful to you, if you are often ill as you were yesterday."
+
+As you will see, I was unable to end my letter without a touch of
+impertinent irony, which proved how much in love I still was.
+
+I read and reread this letter ten times over; then the thought of the
+pain it would give to Marguerite calmed me a little. I tried to persuade
+myself of the feelings which it professed; and when my servant came to
+my room at eight o'clock, I gave it to him and told him to take it at
+once.
+
+"Shall I wait for an answer?" asked Joseph (my servant, like all
+servants, was called Joseph).
+
+"If they ask whether there is a reply, you will say that you don't know,
+and wait."
+
+I buoyed myself up with the hope that she would reply. Poor, feeble
+creatures that we are! All the time that my servant was away I was in a
+state of extreme agitation. At one moment I would recall how Marguerite
+had given herself to me, and ask myself by what right I wrote her an
+impertinent letter, when she could reply that it was not M. de G. who
+supplanted me, but I who had supplanted M. de G.: a mode of reasoning
+which permits many women to have many lovers. At another moment I would
+recall her promises, and endeavour to convince myself that my letter was
+only too gentle, and that there were not expressions forcible enough to
+punish a woman who laughed at a love like mine. Then I said to myself
+that I should have done better not to have written to her, but to have
+gone to see her, and that then I should have had the pleasure of seeing
+the tears that she would shed. Finally, I asked myself what she would
+reply to me; already prepared to believe whatever excuse she made.
+
+Joseph returned.
+
+"Well?" I said to him.
+
+"Sir," said he, "madame was not up, and still asleep, but as soon as she
+rings the letter will be taken to her, and if there is any reply it will
+be sent."
+
+She was asleep!
+
+Twenty times I was on the point of sending to get the letter back, but
+every time I said to myself: "Perhaps she will have got it already, and
+it would look as if I have repented of sending it."
+
+As the hour at which it seemed likely that she would reply came nearer,
+I regretted more and more that I had written. The clock struck, ten,
+eleven, twelve. At twelve I was on the point of keeping the appointment
+as if nothing had happened. In the end I could see no way out of the
+circle of fire which closed upon me.
+
+Then I began to believe, with the superstition which people have when
+they are waiting, that if I went out for a little while, I should find
+an answer when I got back. I went out under the pretext of going to
+lunch.
+
+Instead of lunching at the Cafe Foy, at the corner of the Boulevard, as
+I usually did, I preferred to go to the Palais Royal and so pass through
+the Rue d'Antin. Every time that I saw a woman at a distance, I fancied
+it was Nanine bringing me an answer. I passed through the Rue d'Antin
+without even coming across a commissionaire. I went to Very's in the
+Palais Royal. The waiter gave me something to eat, or rather served up
+to me whatever he liked, for I ate nothing. In spite of myself, my eyes
+were constantly fixed on the clock. I returned home, certain that I
+should find a letter from Marguerite.
+
+The porter had received nothing, but I still hoped in my servant. He had
+seen no one since I went out.
+
+If Marguerite had been going to answer me she would have answered long
+before.
+
+Then I began to regret the terms of my letter; I should have said
+absolutely nothing, and that would undoubtedly have aroused her
+suspicions, for, finding that I did not keep my appointment, she would
+have inquired the reason of my absence, and only then I should have
+given it to her. Thus, she would have had to exculpate herself, and what
+I wanted was for her to exculpate herself. I already realized that I
+should have believed whatever reasons she had given me, and anything was
+better than not to see her again.
+
+At last I began to believe that she would come to see me herself; but
+hour followed hour, and she did not come.
+
+Decidedly Marguerite was not like other women, for there are few
+who would have received such a letter as I had just written without
+answering it at all.
+
+At five, I hastened to the Champs-Elysees. "If I meet her," I thought,
+"I will put on an indifferent air, and she will be convinced that I no
+longer think about her."
+
+As I turned the corner of the Rue Royale, I saw her pass in her
+carriage. The meeting was so sudden that I turned pale. I do not know if
+she saw my emotion; as for me, I was so agitated that I saw nothing but
+the carriage.
+
+I did not go any farther in the direction of the Champs-Elysees. I
+looked at the advertisements of the theatres, for I had still a chance
+of seeing her. There was a first night at the Palais Royal. Marguerite
+was sure to be there. I was at the theatre by seven. The boxes filled
+one after another, but Marguerite was not there. I left the Palais Royal
+and went to all the theatres where she was most often to be seen: to the
+Vaudeville, the Varietes, the Opera Comique. She was nowhere.
+
+Either my letter had troubled her too much for her to care to go to
+the theatre, or she feared to come across me, and so wished to avoid an
+explanation. So my vanity was whispering to me on the boulevards, when I
+met Gaston, who asked me where I had been.
+
+"At the Palais Royal."
+
+"And I at the Opera," said he; "I expected to see you there."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because Marguerite was there."
+
+"Ah, she was there?"
+
+"Yes.
+
+"Alone?"
+
+"No; with another woman."
+
+"That all?"
+
+"The Comte de G. came to her box for an instant; but she went off with
+the duke. I expected to see you every moment, for there was a stall at
+my side which remained empty the whole evening, and I was sure you had
+taken it."
+
+"But why should I go where Marguerite goes?"
+
+"Because you are her lover, surely!"
+
+"Who told you that?"
+
+"Prudence, whom I met yesterday. I give you my congratulations, my dear
+fellow; she is a charming mistress, and it isn't everybody who has the
+chance. Stick to her; she will do you credit."
+
+These simple reflections of Gaston showed me how absurd had been my
+susceptibilities. If I had only met him the night before and he had
+spoken to me like that, I should certainly not have written the foolish
+letter which I had written.
+
+I was on the point of calling on Prudence, and of sending her to tell
+Marguerite that I wanted to speak to her; but I feared that she would
+revenge herself on me by saying that she could not see me, and I
+returned home, after passing through the Rue d'Antin. Again I asked my
+porter if there was a letter for me. Nothing! She is waiting to see if I
+shall take some fresh step, and if I retract my letter of to-day, I said
+to myself as I went to bed; but, seeing that I do not write, she will
+write to me to-morrow.
+
+That night, more than ever, I reproached myself for what I had done. I
+was alone, unable to sleep, devoured by restlessness and jealousy, when
+by simply letting things take their natural course I should have been
+with Marguerite, hearing the delicious words which I had heard only
+twice, and which made my ears burn in my solitude.
+
+The most frightful part of the situation was that my judgment was
+against me; as a matter of fact, everything went to prove that
+Marguerite loved me. First, her proposal to spend the summer with me in
+the country, then the certainty that there was no reason why she should
+be my mistress, since my income was insufficient for her needs and even
+for her caprices. There could not then have been on her part anything
+but the hope of finding in me a sincere affection, able to give her
+rest from the mercenary loves in whose midst she lived; and on the very
+second day I had destroyed this hope, and paid by impertinent irony for
+the love which I had accepted during two nights. What I had done was
+therefore not merely ridiculous, it was indelicate. I had not even
+paid the woman, that I might have some right to find fault with her;
+withdrawing after two days, was I not like a parasite of love, afraid of
+having to pay the bill of the banquet? What! I had only known Marguerite
+for thirty-six hours; I had been her lover for only twenty-four; and
+instead of being too happy that she should grant me all that she did,
+I wanted to have her all to myself, and to make her sever at one stroke
+all her past relations which were the revenue of her future. What had I
+to reproach in her? Nothing. She had written to say she was unwell, when
+she might have said to me quite crudely, with the hideous frankness of
+certain women, that she had to see a lover; and, instead of believing
+her letter, instead of going to any street in Paris except the Rue
+d'Antin, instead of spending the evening with my friends, and presenting
+myself next day at the appointed hour, I was acting the Othello, spying
+upon her, and thinking to punish her by seeing her no more. But, on the
+contrary, she ought to be enchanted at this separation. She ought to
+find me supremely foolish, and her silence was not even that of rancour;
+it was contempt.
+
+I might have made Marguerite a present which would leave no doubt as to
+my generosity and permit me to feel properly quits of her, as of a
+kept woman, but I should have felt that I was offending by the least
+appearance of trafficking, if not the love which she had for me, at all
+events the love which I had for her, and since this love was so pure
+that it could admit no division, it could not pay by a present, however
+generous, the happiness that it had received, however short that
+happiness had been.
+
+That is what I said to myself all night long, and what I was every
+moment prepared to go and say to Marguerite. When the day dawned I
+was still sleepless. I was in a fever. I could think of nothing but
+Marguerite.
+
+As you can imagine, it was time to take a decided step, and finish
+either with the woman or with one's scruples, if, that is, she would
+still be willing to see me. But you know well, one is always slow in
+taking a decided step; so, unable to remain within doors and not daring
+to call on Marguerite, I made one attempt in her direction, an attempt
+that I could always look upon as a mere chance if it succeeded.
+
+It was nine o'clock, and I went at once to call upon Prudence, who asked
+to what she owed this early visit. I dared not tell her frankly what
+brought me. I replied that I had gone out early in order to reserve a
+place in the diligence for C., where my father lived.
+
+"You are fortunate," she said, "in being able to get away from Paris in
+this fine weather."
+
+I looked at Prudence, asking myself whether she was laughing at me, but
+her face was quite serious.
+
+"Shall you go and say good-bye to Marguerite?" she continued, as
+seriously as before.
+
+"No."
+
+"You are quite right."
+
+"You think so?"
+
+"Naturally. Since you have broken with her, why should you see her
+again?"
+
+"You know it is broken off?"
+
+"She showed me your letter."
+
+"What did she say about it?"
+
+"She said: 'My dear Prudence, your protege is not polite; one thinks
+such letters, one does not write them."'
+
+"In what tone did she say that?"
+
+"Laughingly," and she added: "He has had supper with me twice, and hasn't
+even called."
+
+That, then, was the effect produced by my letter and my jealousy. I was
+cruelly humiliated in the vanity of my affection.
+
+"What did she do last night?"
+
+"She went to the opera."
+
+"I know. And afterward?"
+
+"She had supper at home."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+"With the Comte de G., I believe."
+
+So my breaking with her had not changed one of her habits. It is for
+such reasons as this that certain people say to you: Don't have anything
+more to do with the woman; she cares nothing about you.
+
+"Well, I am very glad to find that Marguerite does not put herself out
+for me," I said with a forced smile.
+
+"She has very good reason not to. You have done what you were bound to
+do. You have been more reasonable than she, for she was really in love
+with you; she did nothing but talk of you. I don't know what she would
+not have been capable of doing."
+
+"Why hasn't she answered me, if she was in love with me?"
+
+"Because she realizes she was mistaken in letting herself love you.
+Women sometimes allow you to be unfaithful to their love; they never
+allow you to wound their self-esteem; and one always wounds the
+self-esteem of a woman when, two days after one has become her lover,
+one leaves her, no matter for what reason. I know Marguerite; she would
+die sooner than reply."
+
+"What can I do, then?"
+
+"Nothing. She will forget you, you will forget her, and neither will
+have any reproach to make against the other."
+
+"But if I write and ask her forgiveness?"
+
+"Don't do that, for she would forgive you."
+
+I could have flung my arms round Prudence's neck.
+
+A quarter of an hour later I was once more in my own quarters, and I
+wrote to Marguerite:
+
+"Some one, who repents of a letter that he wrote yesterday and who will
+leave Paris to-morrow if you do not forgive him, wishes to know at what
+hour he might lay his repentance at your feet.
+
+"When can he find you alone? for, you know, confessions must be made
+without witnesses."
+
+I folded this kind of madrigal in prose, and sent it by Joseph, who
+handed it to Marguerite herself; she replied that she would send the
+answer later.
+
+I only went out to have a hasty dinner, and at eleven in the evening no
+reply had come. I made up my mind to endure it no longer, and to set out
+next day. In consequence of this resolution, and convinced that I should
+not sleep if I went to bed, I began to pack up my things.
+
+
+
+Chapter 15
+
+It was hardly an hour after Joseph and I had begun preparing for my
+departure, when there was a violent ring at the door.
+
+"Shall I go to the door?" said Joseph.
+
+"Go," I said, asking myself who it could be at such an hour, and not
+daring to believe that it was Marguerite.
+
+"Sir," said Joseph coming back to me, "it is two ladies."
+
+"It is we, Armand," cried a voice that I recognised as that of Prudence.
+
+I came out of my room. Prudence was standing looking around the place;
+Marguerite, seated on the sofa, was meditating. I went to her, knelt
+down, took her two hands, and, deeply moved, said to her, "Pardon."
+
+She kissed me on the forehead, and said:
+
+"This is the third time that I have forgiven you."
+
+"I should have gone away to-morrow."
+
+"How can my visit change your plans? I have not come to hinder you from
+leaving Paris. I have come because I had no time to answer you during
+the day, and I did not wish to let you think that I was angry with you.
+Prudence didn't want me to come; she said that I might be in the way."
+
+"You in the way, Marguerite! But how?"
+
+"Well, you might have had a woman here," said Prudence, "and it would
+hardly have been amusing for her to see two more arrive."
+
+During this remark Marguerite looked at me attentively.
+
+"My dear Prudence," I answered, "you do not know what you are saying."
+
+"What a nice place you've got!" Prudence went on. "May we see the
+bedroom?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Prudence went into the bedroom, not so much to see it as to make up for
+the foolish thing which she had just said, and to leave Marguerite and
+me alone.
+
+"Why did you bring Prudence?" I asked her.
+
+"Because she was at the theatre with me, and because when I leave here I
+want to have someone to see me home."
+
+"Could not I do?"
+
+"Yes, but, besides not wishing to put you out, I was sure that if you
+came as far as my door you would want to come up, and as I could not let
+you, I did not wish to let you go away blaming me for saying 'No.'"
+
+"And why could you not let me come up?"
+
+"Because I am watched, and the least suspicion might do me the greatest
+harm."
+
+"Is that really the only reason?"
+
+"If there were any other, I would tell you; for we are not to have any
+secrets from one another now."
+
+"Come, Marguerite, I am not going to take a roundabout way of saying
+what I really want to say. Honestly, do you care for me a little?"
+
+"A great deal."
+
+"Then why did you deceive me?"
+
+"My friend, if I were the Duchess So and So, if I had two hundred
+thousand francs a year, and if I were your mistress and had another
+lover, you would have the right to ask me; but I am Mlle. Marguerite
+Gautier, I am forty thousand francs in debt, I have not a penny of my
+own, and I spend a hundred thousand francs a year. Your question becomes
+unnecessary and my answer useless."
+
+"You are right," I said, letting my head sink on her knees; "but I love
+you madly."
+
+"Well, my friend, you must either love me a little less or understand me
+a little better. Your letter gave me a great deal of pain. If I had
+been free, first of all I would not have seen the count the day before
+yesterday, or, if I had, I should have come and asked your forgiveness
+as you ask me now, and in future I should have had no other lover but
+you. I fancied for a moment that I might give myself that happiness for
+six months; you would not have it; you insisted on knowing the means.
+Well, good heavens, the means were easy enough to guess! In employing
+them I was making a greater sacrifice for you than you imagine. I might
+have said to you, 'I want twenty thousand francs'; you were in love with
+me and you would have found them, at the risk of reproaching me for it
+later on. I preferred to owe you nothing; you did not understand the
+scruple, for such it was. Those of us who are like me, when we have any
+heart at all, we give a meaning and a development to words and things
+unknown to other women; I repeat, then, that on the part of Marguerite
+Gautier the means which she used to pay her debts without asking you for
+the money necessary for it, was a scruple by which you ought to profit,
+without saying anything. If you had only met me to-day, you would be too
+delighted with what I promised you, and you would not question me as to
+what I did the day before yesterday. We are sometimes obliged to buy the
+satisfaction of our souls at the expense of our bodies, and we suffer
+still more, when, afterward, that satisfaction is denied us."
+
+I listened, and I gazed at Marguerite with admiration. When I thought
+that this marvellous creature, whose feet I had once longed to kiss, was
+willing to let me take my place in her thoughts, my part in her life,
+and that I was not yet content with what she gave me, I asked if man's
+desire has indeed limits when, satisfied as promptly as mine had been,
+it reached after something further.
+
+"Truly," she continued, "we poor creatures of chance have fantastic
+desires and inconceivable loves. We give ourselves now for one thing,
+now for another. There are men who ruin themselves without obtaining
+the least thing from us; there are others who obtain us for a bouquet of
+flowers. Our hearts have their caprices; it is their one distraction
+and their one excuse. I gave myself to you sooner than I ever did to
+any man, I swear to you; and do you know why? Because when you saw me
+spitting blood you took my hand; because you wept; because you are the
+only human being who has ever pitied me. I am going to say a mad thing
+to you: I once had a little dog who looked at me with a sad look when
+I coughed; that is the only creature I ever loved. When he died I cried
+more than when my mother died. It is true that for twelve years of her
+life she used to beat me. Well, I loved you all at once, as much as my
+dog. If men knew what they can have for a tear, they would be better
+loved and we should be less ruinous to them.
+
+"Your letter undeceived me; it showed me that you lacked the
+intelligence of the heart; it did you more harm with me than anything
+you could possibly have done. It was jealousy certainly, but ironical
+and impertinent jealousy. I was already feeling sad when I received your
+letter. I was looking forward to seeing you at twelve, to having lunch
+with you, and wiping out, by seeing you, a thought which was with
+me incessantly, and which, before I knew you, I had no difficulty in
+tolerating.
+
+"Then," continued Marguerite, "you were the only person before whom it
+seemed to me, from the first, that I could think and speak freely. All
+those who come about women like me have an interest in calculating
+their slightest words, in thinking of the consequences of their most
+insignificant actions. Naturally we have no friends. We have selfish
+lovers who spend their fortunes, riot on us, as they say, but on their
+own vanity. For these people we have to be merry when they are merry,
+well when they want to sup, sceptics like themselves. We are not allowed
+to have hearts, under penalty of being hooted down and of ruining our
+credit.
+
+"We no longer belong to ourselves. We are no longer beings, but things.
+We stand first in their self-esteem, last in their esteem. We have women
+who call themselves our friends, but they are friends like Prudence,
+women who were once kept and who have still the costly tastes that their
+age does not allow them to gratify. Then they become our friends, or
+rather our guests at table. Their friendship is carried to the point of
+servility, never to that of disinterestedness. Never do they give you
+advice which is not lucrative. It means little enough to them that we
+should have ten lovers extra, as long as they get dresses or a bracelet
+out of them, and that they can drive in our carriage from time to time
+or come to our box at the theatre. They have our last night's bouquets,
+and they borrow our shawls. They never render us a service, however
+slight, without seeing that they are paid twice its value. You yourself
+saw when Prudence brought me the six thousand francs that I had asked
+her to get from the duke, how she borrowed five hundred francs, which
+she will never pay me back, or which she will pay me in hats, which will
+never be taken out of their boxes.
+
+"We can not, then, have, or rather I can not have more than one possible
+kind of happiness, and this is, sad as I sometimes am, suffering as I
+always am, to find a man superior enough not to ask questions about my
+life, and to be the lover of my impressions rather than of my body.
+Such a man I found in the duke; but the duke is old, and old age neither
+protects nor consoles. I thought I could accept the life which he
+offered me; but what would you have? I was dying of ennui, and if one is
+bound to be consumed, it is as well to throw oneself into the flames as
+to be asphyxiated with charcoal.
+
+"Then I met you, young, ardent, happy, and I tried to make you the man I
+had longed for in my noisy solitude. What I loved in you was not the
+man who was, but the man who was going to be. You do not accept the
+position, you reject it as unworthy of you; you are an ordinary lover.
+Do like the others; pay me, and say no more about it."
+
+Marguerite, tired out with this long confession, threw herself back on
+the sofa, and to stifle a slight cough put up her handkerchief to her
+lips, and from that to her eyes.
+
+"Pardon, pardon," I murmured. "I understood it all, but I wanted to
+have it from your own lips, my beloved Marguerite. Forget the rest and
+remember only one thing: that we belong to one another, that we are
+young, and that we love. Marguerite, do with me as you will; I am your
+slave, your dog, but in the name of heaven tear up the letter which I
+wrote to you and do not make me leave you to-morrow; it would kill me."
+
+Marguerite drew the letter from her bosom, and handing it to me with a
+smile of infinite sweetness, said:
+
+"Here it is. I have brought it back."
+
+I tore the letter into fragments and kissed with tears the hand that
+gave it to me.
+
+At this moment Prudence reappeared.
+
+"Look here, Prudence; do you know what he wants?" said Marguerite.
+
+"He wants you to forgive him."
+
+"Precisely."
+
+"And you do?"
+
+"One has to; but he wants more than that."
+
+"What, then?"
+
+"He wants to have supper with us."
+
+"And do you consent?"
+
+"What do you think?"
+
+"I think that you are two children who haven't an atom of sense between
+you; but I also think that I am very hungry, and that the sooner you
+consent the sooner we shall have supper."
+
+"Come," said Marguerite, "there is room for the three of us in my
+carriage."
+
+"By the way," she added, turning to me, "Nanine will be gone to bed. You
+must open the door; take my key, and try not to lose it again."
+
+I embraced Marguerite until she was almost stifled.
+
+Thereupon Joseph entered.
+
+"Sir," he said, with the air of a man who is very well satisfied with
+himself, "the luggage is packed."
+
+"All of it?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Well, then, unpack it again; I am not going."
+
+
+
+Chapter 16
+
+I might have told you of the beginning of this liaison in a few lines,
+but I wanted you to see every step by which we came, I to agree to
+whatever Marguerite wished, Marguerite to be unable to live apart from
+me.
+
+It was the day after the evening when she came to see me that I sent her
+Manon Lescaut.
+
+From that time, seeing that I could not change my mistress's life, I
+changed my own. I wished above all not to leave myself time to think
+over the position I had accepted, for, in spite of myself, it was a
+great distress to me. Thus my life, generally so calm, assumed all
+at once an appearance of noise and disorder. Never believe, however
+disinterested the love of a kept woman may be, that it will cost one
+nothing. Nothing is so expensive as their caprices, flowers, boxes at
+the theatre, suppers, days in the country, which one can never refuse to
+one's mistress.
+
+As I have told you, I had little money. My father was, and still is,
+receveur general at C. He has a great reputation there for loyalty,
+thanks to which he was able to find the security which he needed in
+order to attain this position.
+
+It is worth forty thousand francs a year, and during the ten years that
+he has had it, he has paid off the security and put aside a dowry for
+my sister. My father is the most honourable man in the world. When
+my mother died, she left six thousand francs a year, which he divided
+between my sister and myself on the very day when he received his
+appointment; then, when I was twenty-one, he added to this little income
+an annual allowance of five thousand francs, assuring me that with
+eight thousand francs a year I might live very happily at Paris, if, in
+addition to this, I would make a position for myself either in law or
+medicine. I came to Paris, studied law, was called to the bar, and, like
+many other young men, put my diploma in my pocket, and let myself drift,
+as one so easily does in Paris.
+
+My expenses were very moderate; only I used up my year's income in
+eight months, and spent the four summer months with my father, which
+practically gave me twelve thousand francs a year, and, in addition, the
+reputation of a good son. For the rest, not a penny of debt.
+
+This, then, was my position when I made the acquaintance of Marguerite.
+You can well understand that, in spite of myself, my expenses soon
+increased. Marguerite's nature was very capricious, and, like so many
+women, she never regarded as a serious expense those thousand and one
+distractions which made up her life. So, wishing to spend as much time
+with me as possible, she would write to me in the morning that she would
+dine with me, not at home, but at some restaurant in Paris or in the
+country. I would call for her, and we would dine and go on to the
+theatre, often having supper as well; and by the end of the evening I
+had spent four or five louis, which came to two or three thousand francs
+a month, which reduced my year to three months and a half, and made it
+necessary for me either to go into debt or to leave Marguerite. I would
+have consented to anything except the latter.
+
+Forgive me if I give you all these details, but you will see that they
+were the cause of what was to follow. What I tell you is a true and
+simple story, and I leave to it all the naivete of its details and all
+the simplicity of its developments.
+
+I realized then that as nothing in the world would make me forget my
+mistress, it was needful for me to find some way of meeting the expenses
+into which she drew me. Then, too, my love for her had so disturbing
+an influence upon me that every moment I spent away from Marguerite was
+like a year, and that I felt the need of consuming these moments in the
+fire of some sort of passion, and of living them so swiftly as not to
+know that I was living them.
+
+I began by borrowing five or six thousand francs on my little capital,
+and with this I took to gambling. Since gambling houses were destroyed
+gambling goes on everywhere. Formerly, when one went to Frascati, one
+had the chance of making a fortune; one played against money, and if
+one lost, there was always the consolation of saying that one might have
+gained; whereas now, except in the clubs, where there is still a certain
+rigour in regard to payments, one is almost certain, the moment one
+gains a considerable sum, not to receive it. You will readily understand
+why. Gambling is only likely to be carried on by young people very much
+in need of money and not possessing the fortune necessary for supporting
+the life they lead; they gamble, then, and with this result; or else
+they gain, and then those who lose serve to pay for their horses
+and mistresses, which is very disagreeable. Debts are contracted,
+acquaintances begun about a green table end by quarrels in which life
+or honour comes to grief; and though one may be an honest man, one finds
+oneself ruined by very honest men, whose only defect is that they have
+not two hundred thousand francs a year.
+
+I need not tell you of those who cheat at play, and of how one hears one
+fine day of their hasty disappearance and tardy condemnation.
+
+I flung myself into this rapid, noisy, and volcanic life, which had
+formerly terrified me when I thought of it, and which had become for
+me the necessary complement of my love for Marguerite. What else could I
+have done?
+
+The nights that I did not spend in the Rue d'Antin, if I had spent them
+alone in my own room, I could not have slept. Jealousy would have kept
+me awake, and inflamed my blood and my thoughts; while gambling gave a
+new turn to the fever which would otherwise have preyed upon my heart,
+and fixed it upon a passion which laid hold on me in spite of myself,
+until the hour struck when I might go to my mistress. Then, and by this
+I knew the violence of my love, I left the table without a moment's
+hesitation, whether I was winning or losing, pitying those whom I left
+behind because they would not, like me, find their real happiness in
+leaving it. For the most of them, gambling was a necessity; for me, it
+was a remedy. Free of Marguerite, I should have been free of gambling.
+
+Thus, in the midst of all that, I preserved a considerable amount of
+self-possession; I lost only what I was able to pay, and gained only
+what I should have been able to lose.
+
+For the rest, chance was on my side. I made no debts, and I spent three
+times as much money as when I did not gamble. It was impossible to
+resist an existence which gave me an easy means of satisfying the
+thousand caprices of Marguerite. As for her, she continued to love me as
+much, or even more than ever.
+
+As I told you, I began by being allowed to stay only from midnight to
+six o'clock, then I was asked sometimes to a box in the theatre, then
+she sometimes came to dine with me. One morning I did not go till eight,
+and there came a day when I did not go till twelve.
+
+But, sooner than the moral metamorphosis, a physical metamorphosis came
+about in Marguerite. I had taken her cure in hand, and the poor
+girl, seeing my aim, obeyed me in order to prove her gratitude. I had
+succeeded without effort or trouble in almost isolating her from her
+former habits. My doctor, whom I had made her meet, had told me that
+only rest and calm could preserve her health, so that in place of supper
+and sleepless nights, I succeeded in substituting a hygienic regime and
+regular sleep. In spite of herself, Marguerite got accustomed to this
+new existence, whose salutary effects she already realized. She began
+to spend some of her evenings at home, or, if the weather was fine, she
+wrapped herself in a shawl, put on a veil, and we went on foot, like
+two children, in the dim alleys of the Champs-Elysees. She would come
+in tired, take a light supper, and go to bed after a little music or
+reading, which she had never been used to do. The cough, which
+every time that I heard it seemed to go through my chest, had almost
+completely disappeared.
+
+At the end of six weeks the count was entirely given up, and only the
+duke obliged me to conceal my liaison with Marguerite, and even he was
+sent away when I was there, under the pretext that she was asleep and
+had given orders that she was not to be awakened.
+
+The habit or the need of seeing me which Marguerite had now contracted
+had this good result: that it forced me to leave the gaming-table just
+at the moment when an adroit gambler would have left it. Settling one
+thing against another, I found myself in possession of some ten thousand
+francs, which seemed to me an inexhaustible capital.
+
+The time of the year when I was accustomed to join my father and sister
+had now arrived, and I did not go; both of them wrote to me frequently,
+begging me to come. To these letters I replied as best I could, always
+repeating that I was quite well and that I was not in need of money, two
+things which, I thought, would console my father for my delay in paying
+him my annual visit.
+
+Just then, one fine day in summer, Marguerite was awakened by the
+sunlight pouring into her room, and, jumping out of bed, asked me if I
+would take her into the country for the whole day.
+
+We sent for Prudence, and all three set off, after Marguerite had given
+Nanine orders to tell the duke that she had taken advantage of the fine
+day to go into the country with Mme. Duvernoy.
+
+Besides the presence of Mme. Duvernoy being needful on account of the
+old duke, Prudence was one of those women who seem made on purpose for
+days in the country. With her unchanging good-humour and her eternal
+appetite, she never left a dull moment to those whom she was with, and
+was perfectly happy in ordering eggs, cherries, milk, stewed rabbit, and
+all the rest of the traditional lunch in the country.
+
+We had now only to decide where we should go. It was once more Prudence
+who settled the difficulty.
+
+"Do you want to go to the real country?" she asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, let us go to Bougival, at the Point du Jour, at Widow Arnould's.
+Armand, order an open carriage."
+
+An hour and a half later we were at Widow Arnould's.
+
+Perhaps you know the inn, which is a hotel on week days and a tea garden
+on Sundays. There is a magnificent view from the garden, which is at
+the height of an ordinary first floor. On the left the Aqueduct of Marly
+closes in the horizon, on the right one looks across bill after hill;
+the river, almost without current at that spot, unrolls itself like a
+large white watered ribbon between the plain of the Gabillons and the
+island of Croissy, lulled eternally by the trembling of its high poplars
+and the murmur of its willows. Beyond, distinct in the sunlight, rise
+little white houses, with red roofs, and manufactories, which, at that
+distance, put an admirable finish to the landscape. Beyond that, Paris
+in the mist! As Prudence had told us, it was the real country, and, I
+must add, it was a real lunch.
+
+It is not only out of gratitude for the happiness I owe it, but
+Bougival, in spite of its horrible name, is one of the prettiest places
+that it is possible to imagine. I have travelled a good deal, and seen
+much grander things, but none more charming than this little village
+gaily seated at the foot of the hill which protects it.
+
+Mme. Arnould asked us if we would take a boat, and Marguerite and
+Prudence accepted joyously.
+
+People have always associated the country with love, and they have done
+well; nothing affords so fine a frame for the woman whom one loves as
+the blue sky, the odours, the flowers, the breeze, the shining solitude
+of fields, or woods. However much one loves a woman, whatever confidence
+one may have in her, whatever certainty her past may offer us as to her
+future, one is always more or less jealous. If you have been in love,
+you must have felt the need of isolating from this world the being in
+whom you would live wholly. It seems as if, however indifferent she may
+be to her surroundings, the woman whom one loves loses something of her
+perfume and of her unity at the contact of men and things. As for me, I
+experienced that more than most. Mine was not an ordinary love; I was
+as much in love as an ordinary creature could be, but with Marguerite
+Gautier; that is to say, that at Paris, at every step, I might elbow
+the man who had already been her lover or who was about to, while in
+the country, surrounded by people whom we had never seen and who had no
+concern with us, alone with nature in the spring-time of the year, that
+annual pardon, and shut off from the noise of the city, I could hide my
+love, and love without shame or fear.
+
+The courtesan disappeared little by little. I had by me a young and
+beautiful woman, whom I loved, and who loved me, and who was called
+Marguerite; the past had no more reality and the future no more clouds.
+The sun shone upon my mistress as it might have shone upon the purest
+bride. We walked together in those charming spots which seemed to have
+been made on purpose to recall the verses of Lamartine or to sing the
+melodies of Scudo. Marguerite was dressed in white, she leaned on my
+arm, saying over to me again under the starry sky the words she had said
+to me the day before, and far off the world went on its way, without
+darkening with its shadow the radiant picture of our youth and love.
+
+That was the dream that the hot sun brought to me that day through the
+leaves of the trees, as, lying on the grass of the island on which we
+had landed, I let my thought wander, free from the human links that had
+bound it, gathering to itself every hope that came in its way.
+
+Add to this that from the place where I was I could see on the shore
+a charming little house of two stories, with a semicircular railing;
+through the railing, in front of the house, a green lawn, smooth as
+velvet, and behind the house a little wood full of mysterious retreats,
+where the moss must efface each morning the pathway that had been
+made the day before. Climbing flowers clung about the doorway of this
+uninhabited house, mounting as high as the first story.
+
+I looked at the house so long that I began by thinking of it as mine, so
+perfectly did it embody the dream that I was dreaming; I saw Marguerite
+and myself there, by day in the little wood that covered the hillside,
+in the evening seated on the grass, and I asked myself if earthly
+creatures had ever been so happy as we should be.
+
+"What a pretty house!" Marguerite said to me, as she followed the
+direction of my gaze and perhaps of my thought.
+
+"Where?" asked Prudence.
+
+"Yonder," and Marguerite pointed to the house in question.
+
+"Ah, delicious!" replied Prudence. "Do you like it?"
+
+"Very much."
+
+"Well, tell the duke to take it for you; he would do so, I am sure. I'll
+see about it if you like."
+
+Marguerite looked at me, as if to ask me what I thought. My dream
+vanished at the last words of Prudence, and brought me back to reality
+so brutally that I was still stunned with the fall.
+
+"Yes, yes, an excellent idea," I stammered, not knowing what I was
+saying.
+
+"Well, I will arrange that," said Marguerite, freeing my hand, and
+interpreting my words according to her own desire. "Let us go and see if
+it is to let."
+
+The house was empty, and to let for two thousand francs.
+
+"Would you be happy here?" she said to me.
+
+"Am I sure of coming here?"
+
+"And for whom else should I bury myself here, if not for you?"
+
+"Well, then, Marguerite, let me take it myself."
+
+"You are mad; not only is it unnecessary, but it would be dangerous. You
+know perfectly well that I have no right to accept it save from one man.
+Let me alone, big baby, and say nothing."
+
+"That means," said Prudence, "that when I have two days free I will come
+and spend them with you."
+
+We left the house, and started on our return to Paris, talking over
+the new plan. I held Marguerite in my arms, and as I got down from the
+carriage, I had already begun to look upon her arrangement with less
+critical eyes.
+
+
+
+Chapter 17
+
+Next day Marguerite sent me away very early, saying that the duke was
+coming at an early hour, and promising to write to me the moment he
+went, and to make an appointment for the evening. In the course of the
+day I received this note:
+
+"I am going to Bougival with the duke; be at Prudence's to-night at
+eight."
+
+At the appointed hour Marguerite came to me at Mme. Duvernoy's. "Well,
+it is all settled," she said, as she entered. "The house is taken?"
+asked Prudence. "Yes; he agreed at once."
+
+I did not know the duke, but I felt ashamed of deceiving him.
+
+"But that is not all," continued Marguerite.
+
+"What else is there?"
+
+"I have been seeing about a place for Armand to stay."
+
+"In the same house?" asked Prudence, laughing.
+
+"No, at Point du Jour, where we had dinner, the duke and I. While he
+was admiring the view, I asked Mme. Arnould (she is called Mme. Arnould,
+isn't she?) if there were any suitable rooms, and she showed me just the
+very thing: salon, anteroom, and bed-room, at sixty francs a month; the
+whole place furnished in a way to divert a hypochondriac. I took it. Was
+I right?" I flung my arms around her neck and kissed her.
+
+"It will be charming," she continued. "You have the key of the little
+door, and I have promised the duke the key of the front door, which
+he will not take, because he will come during the day when he comes. I
+think, between ourselves, that he is enchanted with a caprice which will
+keep me out of Paris for a time, and so silence the objections of his
+family. However, he has asked me how I, loving Paris as I do, could make
+up my mind to bury myself in the country. I told him that I was ill, and
+that I wanted rest. He seemed to have some difficulty in believing me.
+The poor old man is always on the watch. We must take every precaution,
+my dear Armand, for he will have me watched while I am there; and it
+isn't only the question of his taking a house for me, but he has my
+debts to pay, and unluckily I have plenty. Does all that suit you?"
+
+"Yes," I answered, trying to quiet the scruples which this way of living
+awoke in me from time to time.
+
+"We went all over the house, and we shall have everything perfect. The
+duke is going to look after every single thing. Ah, my dear," she added,
+kissing me, "you're in luck; it's a millionaire who makes your bed for
+you."
+
+"And when shall you move into the house?" inquired Prudence.
+
+"As soon as possible."
+
+"Will you take your horses and carriage?"
+
+"I shall take the whole house, and you can look after my place while I
+am away."
+
+A week later Marguerite was settled in her country house, and I was
+installed at Point du Jour.
+
+Then began an existence which I shall have some difficulty in describing
+to you. At first Marguerite could not break entirely with her former
+habits, and, as the house was always en fete, all the women whom
+she knew came to see her. For a whole month there was not a day when
+Marguerite had not eight or ten people to meals. Prudence, on her side,
+brought down all the people she knew, and did the honours of the house
+as if the house belonged to her.
+
+The duke's money paid for all that, as you may imagine; but from time
+to time Prudence came to me, asking for a note for a thousand francs,
+professedly on behalf of Marguerite. You know I had won some money at
+gambling; I therefore immediately handed over to Prudence what she
+asked for Marguerite, and fearing lest she should require more than I
+possessed, I borrowed at Paris a sum equal to that which I had already
+borrowed and paid back. I was then once more in possession of some ten
+thousand francs, without reckoning my allowance. However, Marguerite's
+pleasure in seeing her friends was a little moderated when she saw the
+expense which that pleasure entailed, and especially the necessity she
+was sometimes in of asking me for money. The duke, who had taken the
+house in order that Marguerite might rest there, no longer visited it,
+fearing to find himself in the midst of a large and merry company, by
+whom he did not wish to be seen. This came about through his having once
+arrived to dine tete-a-tete with Marguerite, and having fallen upon
+a party of fifteen, who were still at lunch at an hour when he was
+prepared to sit down to dinner. He had unsuspectingly opened the
+dining-room door, and had been greeted by a burst of laughter, and had
+had to retire precipitately before the impertinent mirth of the women
+who were assembled there.
+
+Marguerite rose from table, and joined the duke in the next room, where
+she tried, as far as possible, to induce him to forget the incident, but
+the old man, wounded in his dignity, bore her a grudge for it, and could
+not forgive her. He said to her, somewhat cruelly, that he was tired of
+paying for the follies of a woman who could not even have him treated
+with respect under his own roof, and he went away in great indignation.
+
+Since that day he had never been heard of.
+
+In vain Marguerite dismissed her guests, changed her way of life;
+the duke was not to be heard of. I was the gainer in so, far that my
+mistress now belonged to me more completely, and my dream was at length
+realized. Marguerite could not be without me. Not caring what the result
+might be, she publicly proclaimed our liaison, and I had come to live
+entirely at her house. The servants addressed me officially as their
+master.
+
+Prudence had strictly sermonized Marguerite in regard to her new manner
+of life; but she had replied that she loved me, that she could not live
+without me, and that, happen what might, she would not sacrifice the
+pleasure of having me constantly with her, adding that those who were
+not satisfied with this arrangement were free to stay away. So much
+I had heard one day when Prudence had said to Marguerite that she had
+something very important to tell her, and I had listened at the door of
+the room into which they had shut themselves.
+
+Not long after, Prudence returned again. I was at the other end of the
+garden when she arrived, and she did not see me. I had no doubt, from
+the way in which Marguerite came to meet her, that another similar
+conversation was going to take place, and I was anxious to hear what
+it was about. The two women shut themselves into a boudoir, and I put
+myself within hearing.
+
+"Well?" said Marguerite.
+
+"Well, I have seen the duke."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"That he would gladly forgive you in regard to the scene which took
+place, but that he has learned that you are publicly living with M.
+Armand Duval, and that he will never forgive that. 'Let Marguerite leave
+the young man,' he said to me, 'and, as in the past, I will give her all
+that she requires; if not, let her ask nothing more from me.'"
+
+"And you replied?"
+
+"That I would report his decision to you, and I promised him that I
+would bring you into a more reasonable frame of mind. Only think, my
+dear child, of the position that you are losing, and that Armand can
+never give you. He loves you with all his soul, but he has no fortune
+capable of supplying your needs, and he will be bound to leave you one
+day, when it will be too late and when the duke will refuse to do any
+more for you. Would you like me to speak to Armand?"
+
+Marguerite seemed to be thinking, for she answered nothing. My heart
+beat violently while I waited for her reply.
+
+"No," she answered, "I will not leave Armand, and I will not conceal the
+fact that I am living with him. It is folly no doubt, but I love him.
+What would you have me do? And then, now that he has got accustomed to
+be always with me, he would suffer too cruelly if he had to leave me so
+much as an hour a day. Besides, I have not such a long time to live that
+I need make myself miserable in order to please an old man whose very
+sight makes me feel old. Let him keep his money; I will do without it."
+
+"But what will you do?"
+
+"I don't in the least know."
+
+Prudence was no doubt going to make some reply, but I entered suddenly
+and flung myself at Marguerite's feet, covering her hands with tears in
+my joy at being thus loved.
+
+"My life is yours, Marguerite; you need this man no longer. Am I not
+here? Shall I ever leave you, and can I ever repay you for the happiness
+that you give me? No more barriers, my Marguerite; we love; what matters
+all the rest?"
+
+"Oh yes, I love you, my Armand," she murmured, putting her two arms
+around my neck. "I love you as I never thought I should ever love. We
+will be happy; we will live quietly, and I will say good-bye forever to
+the life for which I now blush. You won't ever reproach me for the past?
+Tell me!"
+
+Tears choked my voice. I could only reply by clasping Marguerite to my
+heart.
+
+"Well," said she, turning to Prudence, and speaking in a broken voice,
+"you can report this scene to the duke, and you can add that we have no
+longer need of him."
+
+From that day forth the duke was never referred to. Marguerite was no
+longer the same woman that I had known. She avoided everything that
+might recall to me the life which she had been leading when I first
+met her. Never did wife or sister surround husband or brother with
+such loving care as she had for me. Her nature was morbidly open to all
+impressions and accessible to all sentiments. She had broken equally
+with her friends and with her ways, with her words and with her
+extravagances. Any one who had seen us leaving the house to go on the
+river in the charming little boat which I had bought would never have
+believed that the woman dressed in white, wearing a straw hat, and
+carrying on her arm a little silk pelisse to protect her against the
+damp of the river, was that Marguerite Gautier who, only four months
+ago, had been the talk of the town for the luxury and scandal of her
+existence.
+
+Alas, we made haste to be happy, as if we knew that we were not to be
+happy long.
+
+For two months we had not even been to Paris. No one came to see us,
+except Prudence and Julie Duprat, of whom I have spoken to you, and to
+whom Marguerite was afterward to give the touching narrative that I have
+there.
+
+I passed whole days at the feet of my mistress. We opened the windows
+upon the garden, and, as we watched the summer ripening in its flowers
+and under the shadow of the trees, we breathed together that true life
+which neither Marguerite nor I had ever known before.
+
+Her delight in the smallest things was like that of a child. There were
+days when she ran in the garden, like a child of ten, after a butterfly
+or a dragon-fly. This courtesan who had cost more money in bouquets than
+would have kept a whole family in comfort, would sometimes sit on the
+grass for an hour, examining the simple flower whose name she bore.
+
+It was at this time that she read Manon Lescaut, over and over again.
+I found her several times making notes in the book, and she always
+declared that when a woman loves, she can not do as Manon did.
+
+The duke wrote to her two or three times. She recognised the writing and
+gave me the letters without reading them. Sometimes the terms of these
+letters brought tears to my eyes. He had imagined that by closing his
+purse to Marguerite, he would bring her back to him; but when he had
+perceived the uselessness of these means, he could hold out no longer;
+he wrote and asked that he might see her again, as before, no matter on
+what conditions.
+
+I read these urgent and repeated letters, and tore them in pieces,
+without telling Marguerite what they contained and without advising her
+to see the old man again, though I was half inclined to, so much did I
+pity him, but I was afraid lest, if I so advised her she should think
+that I wished the duke, not merely to come and see her again, but to
+take over the expenses of the house; I feared, above all, that she might
+think me capable of shirking the responsibilities of every consequence
+to which her love for me might lead her.
+
+It thus came about that the duke, receiving no reply, ceased to write,
+and that Marguerite and I continued to live together without giving a
+thought to the future.
+
+
+
+Chapter 18
+
+It would be difficult to give you all the details of our new life. It
+was made up of a series of little childish events, charming for us but
+insignificant to anyone else. You know what it is to be in love with
+a woman, you know how it cuts short the days, and with what loving
+listlessness one drifts into the morrow. You know that forgetfulness of
+everything which comes of a violent confident, reciprocated love. Every
+being who is not the beloved one seems a useless being in creation. One
+regrets having cast scraps of one's heart to other women, and one can
+not believe in the possibility of ever pressing another hand than that
+which one holds between one's hands. The mind admits neither work nor
+remembrance; nothing, in short, which can distract it from the one
+thought in which it is ceaselessly absorbed. Every day one discovers in
+one's mistress a new charm and unknown delights. Existence itself is but
+the unceasing accomplishment of an unchanging desire; the soul is but
+the vestal charged to feed the sacred fire of love.
+
+We often went at night-time to sit in the little wood above the house;
+there we listened to the cheerful harmonies of evening, both of us
+thinking of the coming hours which should leave us to one another till
+the dawn of day. At other times we did not get up all day; we did not
+even let the sunlight enter our room.
+
+The curtains were hermetically closed, and for a moment the external
+world did not exist for us. Nanine alone had the right to open our door,
+but only to bring in our meals and even these we took without getting
+up, interrupting them with laughter and gaiety. To that succeeded a
+brief sleep, for, disappearing into the depths of our love, we were like
+two divers who only come to the surface to take breath.
+
+Nevertheless, I surprised moments of sadness, even tears, in Marguerite;
+I asked her the cause of her trouble, and she answered:
+
+"Our love is not like other loves, my Armand. You love me as if I had
+never belonged to another, and I tremble lest later on, repenting of
+your love, and accusing me of my past, you should let me fall back into
+that life from which you have taken me. I think that now that I have
+tasted of another life, I should die if I went back to the old one. Tell
+me that you will never leave me!"
+
+"I swear it!"
+
+At these words she looked at me as if to read in my eyes whether my oath
+was sincere; then flung herself into my arms, and, hiding her head in my
+bosom, said to me: "You don't know how much I love you!"
+
+One evening, seated on the balcony outside the window, we looked at the
+moon which seemed to rise with difficulty out of its bed of clouds,
+and we listened to the wind violently rustling the trees; we held each
+other's hands, and for a whole quarter of an hour we had not spoken,
+when Marguerite said to me:
+
+"Winter is at hand. Would you like for us to go abroad?"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"To Italy."
+
+"You are tired of here?"
+
+"I am afraid of the winter; I am particularly afraid of your return to
+Paris."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"For many reasons."
+
+And she went on abruptly, without giving me her reasons for fears:
+
+"Will you go abroad? I will sell all that I have; we will go and live
+there, and there will be nothing left of what I was; no one will know
+who I am. Will you?"
+
+"By all means, if you like, Marguerite, let us travel," I said. "But
+where is the necessity of selling things which you will be glad of when
+we return? I have not a large enough fortune to accept such a sacrifice;
+but I have enough for us to be able to travel splendidly for five or six
+months, if that will amuse you the least in the world."
+
+"After all, no," she said, leaving the window and going to sit down
+on the sofa at the other end of the room. "Why should we spend money
+abroad? I cost you enough already, here."
+
+"You reproach me, Marguerite; it isn't generous."
+
+"Forgive me, my friend," she said, giving me her hand. "This thunder
+weather gets on my nerves; I do not say what I intend to say."
+
+And after embracing me she fell into a long reverie.
+
+Scenes of this kind often took place, and though I could not discover
+their cause, I could not fail to see in Marguerite signs of disquietude
+in regard to the future. She could not doubt my love, which increased
+day by day, and yet I often found her sad, without being able to get any
+explanation of the reason, except some physical cause. Fearing that so
+monotonous a life was beginning to weary her, I proposed returning to
+Paris; but she always refused, assuring me that she could not be so
+happy anywhere as in the country.
+
+Prudence now came but rarely; but she often wrote letters which I never
+asked to see, though, every time they came, they seemed to preoccupy
+Marguerite deeply. I did not know what to think.
+
+One day Marguerite was in her room. I entered. She was writing. "To whom
+are you writing?" I asked. "To Prudence. Do you want to see what I am
+writing?"
+
+I had a horror of anything that might look like suspicion, and I
+answered that I had no desire to know what she was writing; and yet
+I was certain that letter would have explained to me the cause of her
+sadness.
+
+Next day the weather was splendid.' Marguerite proposed to me to
+take the boat and go as far as the island of Croissy. She seemed very
+cheerful; when we got back it was five o'clock.
+
+"Mme. Duvernoy has been here," said Nanine, as she saw us enter. "She
+has gone again?" asked Marguerite.
+
+"Yes, madame, in the carriage; she said it was arranged."
+
+"Quite right," said Marguerite sharply. "Serve the dinner."
+
+Two days afterward there came a letter from Prudence, and for a
+fortnight Marguerite seemed to have got rid of her mysterious gloom,
+for which she constantly asked my forgiveness, now that it no longer
+existed. Still, the carriage did not return.
+
+"How is it that Prudence does not send you back your carriage?" I asked
+one day.
+
+"One of the horses is ill, and there are some repairs to be done. It is
+better to have that done while we are here, and don't need a carriage,
+than to wait till we get back to Paris."
+
+Prudence came two days afterward, and confirmed what Marguerite had
+said. The two women went for a walk in the garden, and when I joined
+them they changed the conversation. That night, as she was going,
+Prudence complained of the cold and asked Marguerite to lend her a
+shawl.
+
+So a month passed, and all the time Marguerite was more joyous and more
+affectionate than she ever had been. Nevertheless, the carriage did not
+return, the shawl had not been sent back, and I began to be anxious in
+spite of myself, and as I knew in which drawer Marguerite put Prudence's
+letters, I took advantage of a moment when she was at the other end of
+the garden, went to the drawer, and tried to open it; in vain, for it
+was locked. When I opened the drawer in which the trinkets and diamonds
+were usually kept, these opened without resistance, but the jewel cases
+had disappeared, along with their contents no doubt.
+
+A sharp fear penetrated my heart. I might indeed ask Marguerite for the
+truth in regard to these disappearances, but it was certain that she
+would not confess it.
+
+"My good Marguerite," I said to her, "I am going to ask your permission
+to go to Paris. They do not know my address, and I expect there are
+letters from my father waiting for me. I have no doubt he is concerned;
+I ought to answer him."
+
+"Go, my friend," she said; "but be back early." I went straight to
+Prudence.
+
+"Come," said I, without beating about the bush, "tell me frankly, where
+are Marguerite's horses?"
+
+"Sold."
+
+"The shawl?"
+
+"Sold."
+
+"The diamonds?"
+
+"Pawned."
+
+"And who has sold and pawned them?"
+
+"Why did you not tell me?"
+
+"Because Marguerite made me promise not to."
+
+"And why did you not ask me for money?"
+
+"Because she wouldn't let me."
+
+"And where has this money gone?"
+
+"In payments."
+
+"Is she much in debt?"
+
+"Thirty thousand francs, or thereabouts. Ah, my dear fellow, didn't
+I tell you? You wouldn't believe me; now you are convinced. The
+upholsterer whom the duke had agreed to settle with was shown out of the
+house when he presented himself, and the duke wrote next day to say that
+he would answer for nothing in regard to Mlle. Gautier. This man wanted
+his money; he was given part payment out of the few thousand francs that
+I got from you; then some kind souls warned him that his debtor had been
+abandoned by the duke and was living with a penniless young man; the
+other creditors were told the same; they asked for their money, and
+seized some of the goods. Marguerite wanted to sell everything, but it
+was too late, and besides I should have opposed it. But it was necessary
+to pay, and in order not to ask you for money, she sold her horses and
+her shawls, and pawned her jewels. Would you like to see the receipts
+and the pawn tickets?"
+
+And Prudence opened the drawer and showed me the papers.
+
+"Ah, you think," she continued, with the insistence of a woman who can
+say, I was right after all, "ah, you think it is enough to be in love,
+and to go into the country and lead a dreamy, pastoral life. No, my
+friend, no. By the side of that ideal life, there is a material life,
+and the purest resolutions are held to earth by threads which seem
+slight enough, but which are of iron, not easily to be broken. If
+Marguerite has not been unfaithful to you twenty times, it is because
+she has an exceptional nature. It is not my fault for not advising
+her to, for I couldn't bear to see the poor girl stripping herself
+of everything. She wouldn't; she replied that she loved you, and she
+wouldn't be unfaithful to you for anything in the world. All that is
+very pretty, very poetical, but one can't pay one's creditors in that
+coin, and now she can't free herself from debt, unless she can raise
+thirty thousand francs."
+
+"All right, I will provide that amount."
+
+"You will borrow it?"
+
+"Good heavens! Why, yes!"
+
+"A fine thing that will be to do; you will fall out with your father,
+cripple your resources, and one doesn't find thirty thousand francs from
+one day to another. Believe me, my dear Armand, I know women better than
+you do; do not commit this folly; you will be sorry for it one day. Be
+reasonable. I don't advise you to leave Marguerite, but live with her
+as you did at the beginning. Let her find the means to get out of this
+difficulty. The duke will come back in a little while. The Comte de
+N., if she would take him, he told me yesterday even, would pay all her
+debts, and give her four or five thousand francs a month. He has two
+hundred thousand a year. It would be a position for her, while you
+will certainly be obliged to leave her. Don't wait till you are ruined,
+especially as the Comte de N. is a fool, and nothing would prevent your
+still being Marguerite's lover. She would cry a little at the beginning,
+but she would come to accustom herself to it, and you would thank me
+one day for what you had done. Imagine that Marguerite is married, and
+deceive the husband; that is all. I have already told you all this
+once, only at that time it was merely advice, and now it is almost a
+necessity."
+
+What Prudence said was cruelly true.
+
+"This is how it is," she went on, putting away the papers she had just
+shown me; "women like Marguerite always foresee that someone will love
+them, never that they will love; otherwise they would put aside money,
+and at thirty they could afford the luxury of having a lover for
+nothing. If I had only known once what I know now! In short, say nothing
+to Marguerite, and bring her back to Paris. You have lived with her
+alone for four or five months; that is quite enough. Shut your eyes now;
+that is all that anyone asks of you. At the end of a fortnight she will
+take the Comte de N., and she will save up during the winter, and next
+summer you will begin over again. That is how things are done, my dear
+fellow!"
+
+And Prudence appeared to be enchanted with her advice, which I refused
+indignantly.
+
+Not only my love and my dignity would not let me act thus, but I was
+certain that, feeling as she did now, Marguerite would die rather than
+accept another lover.
+
+"Enough joking," I said to Prudence; "tell me exactly how much
+Marguerite is in need of."
+
+"I have told you: thirty thousand francs."
+
+"And when does she require this sum?"
+
+"Before the end of two months."
+
+"She shall have it."
+
+Prudence shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"I will give it to you," I continued, "but you must swear to me that you
+will not tell Marguerite that I have given it to you."
+
+"Don't be afraid."
+
+"And if she sends you anything else to sell or pawn, let me know."
+
+"There is no danger. She has nothing left."
+
+I went straight to my own house to see if there were any letters from my
+father. There were four.
+
+
+
+Chapter 19
+
+In his first three letters my father inquired the cause of my silence;
+in the last he allowed me to see that he had heard of my change of life,
+and informed me that he was about to come and see me.
+
+I have always had a great respect and a sincere affection for my father.
+I replied that I had been travelling for a short time, and begged him
+to let me know beforehand what day he would arrive, so that I could be
+there to meet him.
+
+I gave my servant my address in the country, telling him to bring me
+the first letter that came with the postmark of C., then I returned to
+Bougival.
+
+Marguerite was waiting for me at the garden gate. She looked at me
+anxiously. Throwing her arms round my neck, she said to me: "Have you
+seen Prudence?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You were a long time in Paris."
+
+"I found letters from my father to which I had to reply."
+
+A few minutes afterward Nanine entered, all out of breath. Marguerite
+rose and talked with her in whispers. When Nanine had gone out
+Marguerite sat down by me again and said, taking my hand:
+
+"Why did you deceive me? You went to see Prudence."
+
+"Who told you?"
+
+"Nanine."
+
+"And how did she know?"
+
+"She followed you."
+
+"You told her to follow me?"
+
+"Yes. I thought that you must have had a very strong motive for going to
+Paris, after not leaving me for four months. I was afraid that something
+might happen to you, or that you were perhaps going to see another
+woman."
+
+"Child!"
+
+"Now I am relieved. I know what you have done, but I don't yet know what
+you have been told."
+
+I showed Marguerite my father's letters.
+
+"That is not what I am asking you about. What I want to know is why you
+went to see Prudence."
+
+"To see her."
+
+"That's a lie, my friend."
+
+"Well, I went to ask her if the horse was any better, and if she wanted
+your shawl and your jewels any longer."
+
+Marguerite blushed, but did not answer.
+
+"And," I continued, "I learned what you had done with your horses,
+shawls, and jewels."
+
+"And you are vexed?"
+
+"I am vexed that it never occurred to you to ask me for what you were in
+want of."
+
+"In a liaison like ours, if the woman has any sense of dignity at all,
+she ought to make every possible sacrifice rather than ask her lover for
+money and so give a venal character to her love. You love me, I am sure,
+but you do not know on how slight a thread depends the love one has
+for a woman like me. Who knows? Perhaps some day when you were bored
+or worried you would fancy you saw a carefully concerted plan in our
+liaison. Prudence is a chatterbox. What need had I of the horses? It was
+an economy to sell them. I don't use them and I don't spend anything
+on their keep; if you love me, I ask nothing more, and you will love me
+just as much without horses, or shawls, or diamonds."
+
+All that was said so naturally that the tears came to my eyes as I
+listened.
+
+"But, my good Marguerite," I replied, pressing her hands lovingly, "you
+knew that one day I should discover the sacrifice you had made, and that
+the moment I discovered it I should allow it no longer."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Because, my dear child, I can not allow your affection for me to
+deprive you of even a trinket. I too should not like you to be able,
+in a moment when you were bored or worried, to think that if you were
+living with somebody else those moments would not exist; and to repent,
+if only for a minute, of living with me. In a few days your horses,
+your diamonds, and your shawls shall be returned to you. They are as
+necessary to you as air is to life, and it may be absurd, but I like you
+better showy than simple."
+
+"Then you no longer love me."
+
+"Foolish creature!"
+
+"If you loved me, you would let me love you my own way; on the
+contrary, you persist in only seeing in me a woman to whom luxury is
+indispensable, and whom you think you are always obliged to pay. You are
+ashamed to accept the proof of my love. In spite of yourself, you think
+of leaving me some day, and you want to put your disinterestedness
+beyond risk of suspicion. You are right, my friend, but I had better
+hopes."
+
+And Marguerite made a motion to rise; I held her, and said to her:
+
+"I want you to be happy and to have nothing to reproach me for, that is
+all."
+
+"And we are going to be separated!"
+
+"Why, Marguerite, who can separate us?" I cried.
+
+"You, who will not let me take you on your own level, but insist on
+taking me on mine; you, who wish me to keep the luxury in the midst of
+which I have lived, and so keep the moral distance which separates us;
+you, who do not believe that my affection is sufficiently disinterested
+to share with me what you have, though we could live happily enough on
+it together, and would rather ruin yourself, because you are still
+bound by a foolish prejudice. Do you really think that I could compare
+a carriage and diamonds with your love? Do you think that my real
+happiness lies in the trifles that mean so much when one has nothing
+to love, but which become trifling indeed when one has? You will pay my
+debts, realize your estate, and then keep me? How long will that last?
+Two or three months, and then it will be too late to live the life I
+propose, for then you will have to take everything from me, and that
+is what a man of honour can not do; while now you have eight or ten
+thousand francs a year, on which we should be able to live. I will sell
+the rest of what I do not want, and with this alone I will make two
+thousand francs a year. We will take a nice little flat in which we can
+both live. In the summer we will go into the country, not to a house
+like this, but to a house just big enough for two people. You are
+independent, I am free, we are young; in heaven's name, Armand, do not
+drive me back into the life I had to lead once!"
+
+I could not answer. Tears of gratitude and love filled my eyes, and I
+flung myself into Marguerite's arms.
+
+"I wanted," she continued, "to arrange everything without telling you,
+pay all my debts, and take a new flat. In October we should have been
+back in Paris, and all would have come out; but since Prudence has
+told you all, you will have to agree beforehand, instead of agreeing
+afterward. Do you love me enough for that?"
+
+It was impossible to resist such devotion. I kissed her hands ardently,
+and said:
+
+"I will do whatever you wish."
+
+It was agreed that we should do as she had planned. Thereupon, she went
+wild with delight; danced, sang, amused herself with calling up pictures
+of her new flat in all its simplicity, and began to consult me as to
+its position and arrangement. I saw how happy and proud she was of this
+resolution, which seemed as if it would bring us into closer and closer
+relationship, and I resolved to do my own share. In an instant I decided
+the whole course of my life. I put my affairs in order, and made over
+to Marguerite the income which had come to me from my mother, and which
+seemed little enough in return for the sacrifice which I was accepting.
+There remained the five thousand francs a year from my father; and,
+whatever happened, I had always enough to live on. I did not tell
+Marguerite what I had done, certain as I was that she would refuse the
+gift. This income came from a mortgage of sixty thousand francs on a
+house that I had never even seen. All that I knew was that every three
+months my father's solicitor, an old friend of the family, handed over
+to me seven hundred and fifty francs in return for my receipt.
+
+The day when Marguerite and I came to Paris to look for a flat, I went
+to this solicitor and asked him what had to be done in order to make
+over this income to another person. The good man imagined I was ruined,
+and questioned me as to the cause of my decision. As I knew that I
+should be obliged, sooner or later, to say in whose favour I made this
+transfer, I thought it best to tell him the truth at once. He made none
+of the objections that his position as friend and solicitor authorized
+him to make, and assured me that he would arrange the whole affair in
+the best way possible. Naturally, I begged him to employ the greatest
+discretion in regard to my father, and on leaving him I rejoined
+Marguerite, who was waiting for me at Julie Duprat's, where she had gone
+in preference to going to listen to the moralizings of Prudence.
+
+We began to look out for flats. All those that we saw seemed to
+Marguerite too dear, and to me too simple. However, we finally found,
+in one of the quietest parts of Paris, a little house, isolated from
+the main part of the building. Behind this little house was a
+charming garden, surrounded by walls high enough to screen us from our
+neighbours, and low enough not to shut off our own view. It was better
+than our expectations.
+
+While I went to give notice at my own flat, Marguerite went to see
+a business agent, who, she told me, had already done for one of her
+friends exactly what she wanted him to do for her. She came on to the
+Rue de Provence in a state of great delight. The man had promised to pay
+all her debts, to give her a receipt for the amount, and to hand over
+to her twenty thousand francs, in return for the whole of her furniture.
+You have seen by the amount taken at the sale that this honest man would
+have gained thirty thousand francs out of his client.
+
+We went back joyously to Bougival, talking over our projects for the
+future, which, thanks to our heedlessness, and especially to our love,
+we saw in the rosiest light.
+
+A week later, as we were having lunch, Nanine came to tell us that my
+servant was asking for me. "Let him come in," I said.
+
+"Sir," said he, "your father has arrived in Paris, and begs you to
+return at once to your rooms, where he is waiting for you."
+
+This piece of news was the most natural thing in the world, yet, as we
+heard it, Marguerite and I looked at one another. We foresaw trouble.
+Before she had spoken a word, I replied to her thought, and, taking her
+hand, I said, "Fear nothing."
+
+"Come back as soon as possible," whispered Marguerite, embracing me; "I
+will wait for you at the window."
+
+I sent on Joseph to tell my father that I was on my way. Two hours later
+I was at the Rue de Provence.
+
+
+
+Chapter 20
+
+My father was seated in my room in his dressing-gown; he was writing,
+and I saw at once, by the way in which he raised his eyes to me when I
+came in, that there was going to be a serious discussion. I went up to
+him, all the same, as if I had seen nothing in his face, embraced him,
+and said:
+
+"When did you come, father?"
+
+"Last night."
+
+"Did you come straight here, as usual?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I am very sorry not to have been here to receive you."
+
+I expected that the sermon which my father's cold face threatened would
+begin at once; but he said nothing, sealed the letter which he had just
+written, and gave it to Joseph to post.
+
+When we were alone, my father rose, and leaning against the
+mantel-piece, said to me:
+
+"My dear Armand, we have serious matters to discuss."
+
+"I am listening, father."
+
+"You promise me to be frank?"
+
+"Am I not accustomed to be so?"
+
+"Is it not true that you are living with a woman called Marguerite
+Gautier?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you know what this woman was?"
+
+"A kept woman."
+
+"And it is for her that you have forgotten to come and see your sister
+and me this year?"
+
+"Yes, father, I admit it."
+
+"You are very much in love with this woman?"
+
+"You see it, father, since she has made me fail in duty toward you, for
+which I humbly ask your forgiveness to-day."
+
+My father, no doubt, was not expecting such categorical answers, for he
+seemed to reflect a moment, and then said to me:
+
+"You have, of course, realized that you can not always live like that?"
+
+"I fear so, father, but I have not realized it."
+
+"But you must realize," continued my father, in a dryer tone, "that I,
+at all events, should not permit it."
+
+"I have said to myself that as long as I did nothing contrary to the
+respect which I owe to the traditional probity of the family I could
+live as I am living, and this has reassured me somewhat in regard to the
+fears I have had."
+
+Passions are formidable enemies to sentiment. I was prepared for every
+struggle, even with my father, in order that I might keep Marguerite.
+
+"Then, the moment is come when you must live otherwise."
+
+"Why, father?"
+
+"Because you are doing things which outrage the respect that you imagine
+you have for your family."
+
+"I don't follow your meaning."
+
+"I will explain it to you. Have a mistress if you will; pay her as a
+man of honour is bound to pay the woman whom he keeps, by all means; but
+that you should come to forget the most sacred things for her, that
+you should let the report of your scandalous life reach my quiet
+countryside, and set a blot on the honourable name that I have given
+you, it can not, it shall not be."
+
+"Permit me to tell you, father, that those who have given you
+information about me have been ill-informed. I am the lover of Mlle.
+Gautier; I live with her; it is the most natural thing in the world.
+I do not give Mlle. Gautier the name you have given me; I spend on her
+account what my means allow me to spend; I have no debts; and, in short,
+I am not in a position which authorizes a father to say to his son what
+you have just said to me."
+
+"A father is always authorized to rescue his son out of evil paths. You
+have not done any harm yet, but you will do it."
+
+"Father!"
+
+"Sir, I know more of life than you do. There are no entirely pure
+sentiments except in perfectly chaste women. Every Manon can have her
+own Des Grieux, and times are changed. It would be useless for the
+world to grow older if it did not correct its ways. You will leave your
+mistress."
+
+"I am very sorry to disobey you, father, but it is impossible."
+
+"I will compel you to do so."
+
+"Unfortunately, father, there no longer exists a Sainte Marguerite to
+which courtesans can be sent, and, even if there were, I would follow
+Mlle. Gautier if you succeeded in having her sent there. What would you
+have? Perhaps am in the wrong, but I can only be happy as long as I am
+the lover of this woman."
+
+"Come, Armand, open your eyes. Recognise that it is your father who
+speaks to you, your father who has always loved you, and who only
+desires your happiness. Is it honourable for you to live like husband
+and wife with a woman whom everybody has had?"
+
+"What does it matter, father, if no one will any more? What does it
+matter, if this woman loves me, if her whole life is changed through the
+love which she has for me and the love which I have for her? What does
+it matter, if she has become a different woman?"
+
+"Do you think, then, sir, that the mission of a man of honour is to
+go about converting lost women? Do you think that God has given such
+a grotesque aim to life, and that the heart should have any room for
+enthusiasm of that kind? What will be the end of this marvellous cure,
+and what will you think of what you are saying to-day by the time you
+are forty? You will laugh at this love of yours, if you can still laugh,
+and if it has not left too serious a trace in your past. What would you
+be now if your father had had your ideas and had given up his life
+to every impulse of this kind, instead of rooting himself firmly in
+convictions of honour and steadfastness? Think it over, Armand, and do
+not talk any more such absurdities. Come, leave this woman; your father
+entreats you."
+
+I answered nothing.
+
+"Armand," continued my father, "in the name of your sainted mother,
+abandon this life, which you will forget more easily than you think. You
+are tied to it by an impossible theory. You are twenty-four; think of
+the future. You can not always love this woman, who also can not always
+love you. You both exaggerate your love. You put an end to your whole
+career. One step further, and you will no longer be able to leave the
+path you have chosen, and you will suffer all your life for what you
+have done in your youth. Leave Paris. Come and stay for a month or two
+with your sister and me. Rest in our quiet family affection will soon
+heal you of this fever, for it is nothing else. Meanwhile, your mistress
+will console herself; she will take another lover; and when you see what
+it is for which you have all but broken with your father, and all but
+lost his love, you will tell me that I have done well to come and
+seek you out, and you will thank me for it. Come, you will go with me,
+Armand, will you not?" I felt that my father would be right if it had
+been any other woman, but I was convinced that he was wrong with regard
+to Marguerite. Nevertheless, the tone in which he said these last words
+was so kind, so appealing, that I dared not answer.
+
+"Well?" said he in a trembling voice.
+
+"Well, father, I can promise nothing," I said at last; "what you ask
+of me is beyond my power. Believe me," I continued, seeing him make
+an impatient movement, "you exaggerate the effects of this liaison.
+Marguerite is a different kind of a woman from what you think. This
+love, far from leading me astray, is capable, on the contrary, of
+setting me in the right direction. Love always makes a man better,
+no matter what woman inspires it. If you knew Marguerite, you would
+understand that I am in no danger. She is as noble as the noblest of
+women. There is as much disinterestedness in her as there is cupidity in
+others."
+
+"All of which does not prevent her from accepting the whole of your
+fortune, for the sixty thousand francs which come to you from your
+mother, and which you are giving her, are, understand me well, your
+whole fortune."
+
+My father had probably kept this peroration and this threat for the last
+stroke. I was firmer before these threats than before his entreaties.
+
+"Who told you that I was handing this sum to her?" I asked.
+
+"My solicitor. Could an honest man carry out such a procedure without
+warning me? Well, it is to prevent you from ruining yourself for a
+prostitute that I am now in Paris. Your mother, when she died, left you
+enough to live on respectably, and not to squander on your mistresses."
+
+"I swear to you, father, that Marguerite knew nothing of this transfer."
+
+"Why, then, do you make it?"
+
+"Because Marguerite, the woman you calumniate, and whom you wish me to
+abandon, is sacrificing all that she possesses in order to live with
+me."
+
+"And you accept this sacrifice? What sort of a man are you, sir, to
+allow Mlle. Gautier to sacrifice anything for you? Come, enough of this.
+You will leave this woman. Just now I begged you; now I command you. I
+will have no such scandalous doings in my family. Pack up your things
+and get ready to come with me."
+
+"Pardon me, father," I said, "but I shall not come."
+
+"And why?"
+
+"Because I am at an age when no one any longer obeys a command."
+
+My father turned pale at my answer.
+
+"Very well, sir," he said, "I know what remains to be done."
+
+He rang and Joseph appeared.
+
+"Have my things taken to the Hotel de Paris," he said to my servant. And
+thereupon he went to his room and finished dressing. When he returned, I
+went up to him.
+
+"Promise me, father," I said, "that you will do nothing to give
+Marguerite pain?"
+
+My father stopped, looked at me disdainfully, and contented himself with
+saying, "I believe you are mad." After this he went out, shutting the
+door violently after him.
+
+I went downstairs, took a cab, and returned to Bougival.
+
+Marguerite was waiting for me at the window.
+
+
+
+Chapter 21
+
+"At last you have come," she said, throwing her arms round my neck. "But
+how pale you are!"
+
+I told her of the scene with my father.
+
+"My God! I was afraid of it," she said. "When Joseph came to tell you
+of your father's arrival I trembled as if he had brought news of some
+misfortune. My poor friend, I am the cause of all your distress. You
+will be better off, perhaps, if you leave me and do not quarrel
+with your father on my account. He knows that you are sure to have a
+mistress, and he ought to be thankful that it is I, since I love you and
+do not want more of you than your position allows. Did you tell him how
+we had arranged our future?"
+
+"Yes; that is what annoyed him the most, for he saw how much we really
+love one another."
+
+"What are we to do, then?"
+
+"Hold together, my good Marguerite, and let the storm pass over."
+
+"Will it pass?"
+
+"It will have to."
+
+"But your father will not stop there."
+
+"What do you suppose he can do?"
+
+"How do I know? Everything that a father can do to make his son obey
+him. He will remind you of my past life, and will perhaps do me the
+honour of inventing some new story, so that you may give me up."
+
+"You know that I love you."
+
+"Yes, but what I know, too, is that, sooner or later, you will have to
+obey your father, and perhaps you will end by believing him."
+
+"No, Marguerite. It is I who will make him believe me. Some of his
+friends have been telling him tales which have made him angry; but he is
+good and just, he will change his first impression; and then, after all,
+what does it matter to me?"
+
+"Do not say that, Armand. I would rather anything should happen than
+that you should quarrel with your family; wait till after to-day, and
+to-morrow go back to Paris. Your father, too, will have thought it over
+on his side, and perhaps you will both come to a better understanding.
+Do not go against his principles, pretend to make some concessions to
+what he wants; seem not to care so very much about me, and he will let
+things remain as they are. Hope, my friend, and be sure of one thing,
+that whatever happens, Marguerite will always be yours."
+
+"You swear it?"
+
+"Do I need to swear it?"
+
+How sweet it is to let oneself be persuaded by the voice that one loves!
+Marguerite and I spent the whole day in talking over our projects for
+the future, as if we felt the need of realizing them as quickly as
+possible. At every moment we awaited some event, but the day passed
+without bringing us any new tidings.
+
+Next day I left at ten o'clock, and reached the hotel about twelve. My
+father had gone out.
+
+I went to my own rooms, hoping that he had perhaps gone there. No one
+had called. I went to the solicitor's. No one was there. I went back to
+the hotel, and waited till six. M. Duval did not return, and I went back
+to Bougival.
+
+I found Marguerite not waiting for me, as she had been the day before,
+but sitting by the fire, which the weather still made necessary. She was
+so absorbed in her thoughts that I came close to her chair without her
+hearing me. When I put my lips to her forehead she started as if the
+kiss had suddenly awakened her.
+
+"You frightened me," she said. "And your father?"
+
+"I have not seen him. I do not know what it means. He was not at his
+hotel, nor anywhere where there was a chance of my finding him."
+
+"Well, you must try again to-morrow."
+
+"I am very much inclined to wait till he sends for me. I think I have
+done all that can be expected of me."
+
+"No, my friend, it is not enough; you must call on your father again,
+and you must call to-morrow."
+
+"Why to-morrow rather than any other day?"
+
+"Because," said Marguerite, and it seemed to me that she blushed
+slightly at this question, "because it will show that you are the more
+keen about it, and he will forgive us the sooner."
+
+For the remainder of the day Marguerite was sad and preoccupied. I had
+to repeat twice over everything I said to her to obtain an answer. She
+ascribed this preoccupation to her anxiety in regard to the events which
+had happened during the last two days. I spent the night in reassuring
+her, and she sent me away in the morning with an insistent disquietude
+that I could not explain to myself.
+
+Again my father was absent, but he had left this letter for me:
+
+"If you call again to-day, wait for me till four. If I am not in by
+four, come and dine with me to-morrow. I must see you."
+
+I waited till the hour he had named, but he did not appear. I returned
+to Bougival.
+
+The night before I had found Marguerite sad; that night I found her
+feverish and agitated. On seeing me, she flung her arms around my neck,
+but she cried for a long time in my arms. I questioned her as to this
+sudden distress, which alarmed me by its violence. She gave me no
+positive reason, but put me off with those evasions which a woman
+resorts to when she will not tell the truth.
+
+When she was a little calmed down, I told her the result of my visit,
+and I showed her my father's letter, from which, I said, we might augur
+well. At the sight of the letter and on hearing my comment, her tears
+began to flow so copiously that I feared an attack of nerves, and,
+calling Nanine, I put her to bed, where she wept without a word, but
+held my hands and kissed them every moment.
+
+I asked Nanine if, during my absence, her mistress had received any
+letter or visit which could account for the state in which I found her,
+but Nanine replied that no one had called and nothing had been sent.
+
+Something, however, had occurred since the day before, something which
+troubled me the more because Marguerite concealed it from me.
+
+In the evening she seemed a little calmer, and, making me sit at the
+foot of the bed, she told me many times how much she loved me. She
+smiled at me, but with an effort, for in spite of herself her eyes were
+veiled with tears.
+
+I used every means to make her confess the real cause of her distress,
+but she persisted in giving me nothing but vague reasons, as I have
+told you. At last she fell asleep in my arms, but it was the sleep which
+tires rather than rests the body. From time to time she uttered a cry,
+started up, and, after assuring herself that I was beside her, made me
+swear that I would always love her.
+
+I could make nothing of these intermittent paroxysms of distress, which
+went on till morning. Then Marguerite fell into a kind of stupor. She
+had not slept for two nights.
+
+Her rest was of short duration, for toward eleven she awoke, and, seeing
+that I was up, she looked about her, crying:
+
+"Are you going already?"
+
+"No," said I, holding her hands; "but I wanted to let you sleep on. It
+is still early."
+
+"What time are you going to Paris?"
+
+"At four."
+
+"So soon? But you will stay with me till then?"
+
+"Of course. Do I not always?"
+
+"I am so glad! Shall we have lunch?" she went on absentmindedly.
+
+"If you like."
+
+"And then you will be nice to me till the very moment you go?"
+
+"Yes; and I will come back as soon as I can."
+
+"You will come back?" she said, looking at me with haggard eyes.
+
+"Naturally."
+
+"Oh, yes, you will come back to-night. I shall wait for you, as I always
+do, and you will love me, and we shall be happy, as we have been ever
+since we have known each other."
+
+All these words were said in such a strained voice, they seemed to hide
+so persistent and so sorrowful a thought, that I trembled every moment
+lest Marguerite should become delirious.
+
+"Listen," I said. "You are ill. I can not leave you like this. I will
+write and tell my father not to expect me."
+
+"No, no," she cried hastily, "don't do that. Your father will accuse me
+of hindering you again from going to see him when he wants to see you;
+no, no, you must go, you must! Besides, I am not ill. I am quite well. I
+had a bad dream and am not yet fully awake."
+
+From that moment Marguerite tried to seem more cheerful. There were no
+more tears.
+
+When the hour came for me to go, I embraced her and asked her if she
+would come with me as far as the train; I hoped that the walk would
+distract her and that the air would do her good. I wanted especially to
+be with her as long as possible.
+
+She agreed, put on her cloak and took Nanine with her, so as not to
+return alone. Twenty times I was on the point of not going. But the
+hope of a speedy return, and the fear of offending my father still more,
+sustained me, and I took my place in the train.
+
+"Till this evening!" I said to Marguerite, as I left her. She did not
+reply.
+
+Once already she had not replied to the same words, and the Comte de G.,
+you will remember, had spent the night with her; but that time was so
+far away that it seemed to have been effaced from my memory, and if I
+had any fear, it was certainly not of Marguerite being unfaithful to me.
+Reaching Paris, I hastened off to see Prudence, intending to ask her
+to go and keep Marguerite company, in the hope that her mirth and
+liveliness would distract her. I entered without being announced, and
+found Prudence at her toilet.
+
+"Ah!" she said, anxiously; "is Marguerite with you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"How is she?"
+
+"She is not well."
+
+"Is she not coming?"
+
+"Did you expect her?"
+
+Madame Duvernoy reddened, and replied, with a certain constraint:
+
+"I only meant that since you are at Paris, is she not coming to join
+you?"
+
+"No."
+
+I looked at Prudence; she cast down her eyes, and I read in her face the
+fear of seeing my visit prolonged.
+
+"I even came to ask you, my dear Prudence, if you have nothing to do
+this evening, to go and see Marguerite; you will be company for her,
+and you can stay the night. I never saw her as she was to-day, and I am
+afraid she is going to be ill."
+
+"I am dining in town," replied Prudence, "and I can't go and see
+Marguerite this evening. I will see her tomorrow."
+
+I took leave of Mme. Duvernoy, who seemed almost as preoccupied as
+Marguerite, and went on to my father's; his first glance seemed to study
+me attentively. He held out his hand.
+
+"Your two visits have given me pleasure, Armand," he said; "they make me
+hope that you have thought over things on your side as I have on mine."
+
+"May I ask you, father, what was the result of your reflection?"
+
+"The result, my dear boy, is that I have exaggerated the importance of
+the reports that had been made to me, and that I have made up my mind to
+be less severe with you."
+
+"What are you saying, father?" I cried joyously.
+
+"I say, my dear child, that every young man must have his mistress, and
+that, from the fresh information I have had, I would rather see you the
+lover of Mlle. Gautier than of anyone else."
+
+"My dear father, how happy you make me!"
+
+We talked in this manner for some moments, and then sat down to table.
+My father was charming all dinner time.
+
+I was in a hurry to get back to Bougival to tell Marguerite about this
+fortunate change, and I looked at the clock every moment.
+
+"You are watching the time," said my father, "and you are impatient to
+leave me. O young people, how you always sacrifice sincere to doubtful
+affections!"
+
+"Do not say that, father; Marguerite loves me, I am sure of it."
+
+My father did not answer; he seemed to say neither yes nor no.
+
+He was very insistent that I should spend the whole evening with him and
+not go till the morning; but Marguerite had not been well when I left
+her. I told him of it, and begged his permission to go back to her
+early, promising to come again on the morrow.
+
+The weather was fine; he walked with me as far as the station. Never had
+I been so happy. The future appeared as I had long desired to see it. I
+had never loved my father as I loved him at that moment.
+
+Just as I was leaving him, he once more begged me to stay. I refused.
+
+"You are really very much in love with her?" he asked.
+
+"Madly."
+
+"Go, then," and he passed his hand across his forehead as if to chase
+a thought, then opened his mouth as if to say something; but he only
+pressed my hand, and left me hurriedly, saying:
+
+"Till to-morrow, then!"
+
+
+
+Chapter 22
+
+It seemed to me as if the train did not move. I reached Bougival at
+eleven.
+
+Not a window in the house was lighted up, and when I rang no one
+answered the bell. It was the first time that such a thing had occurred
+to me. At last the gardener came. I entered. Nanine met me with a light.
+I went to Marguerite's room.
+
+"Where is madame?"
+
+"Gone to Paris," replied Nanine.
+
+"To Paris!"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"When?"
+
+"An hour after you."
+
+"She left no word for me?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+Nanine left me.
+
+Perhaps she had some suspicion or other, I thought, and went to Paris
+to make sure that my visit to my father was not an excuse for a day
+off. Perhaps Prudence wrote to her about something important. I said to
+myself when I was alone; but I saw Prudence; she said nothing to make me
+suppose that she had written to Marguerite.
+
+All at once I remembered Mme. Duvernoy's question, "Isn't she coming
+to-day?" when I had said that Marguerite was ill. I remembered at the
+same time how embarrassed Prudence had appeared when I looked at
+her after this remark, which seemed to indicate an appointment. I
+remembered, too, Marguerite's tears all day long, which my father's
+kind reception had rather put out of my mind. From this moment all the
+incidents grouped themselves about my first suspicion, and fixed it so
+firmly in my mind that everything served to confirm it, even my father's
+kindness.
+
+Marguerite had almost insisted on my going to Paris; she had pretended
+to be calmer when I had proposed staying with her. Had I fallen into
+some trap? Was Marguerite deceiving me? Had she counted on being back
+in time for me not to perceive her absence, and had she been detained by
+chance? Why had she said nothing to Nanine, or why had she not written?
+What was the meaning of those tears, this absence, this mystery?
+
+That is what I asked myself in affright, as I stood in the vacant room,
+gazing at the clock, which pointed to midnight, and seemed to say to me
+that it was too late to hope for my mistress's return. Yet, after all
+the arrangements we had just made, after the sacrifices that had been
+offered and accepted, was it likely that she was deceiving me? No. I
+tried to get rid of my first supposition.
+
+Probably she had found a purchaser for her furniture, and she had
+gone to Paris to conclude the bargain. She did not wish to tell me
+beforehand, for she knew that, though I had consented to it, the sale,
+so necessary to our future happiness, was painful to me, and she feared
+to wound my self-respect in speaking to me about it. She would rather
+not see me till the whole thing was done, and that was evidently why
+Prudence was expecting her when she let out the secret. Marguerite could
+not finish the whole business to-day, and was staying the night with
+Prudence, or perhaps she would come even now, for she must know bow
+anxious I should be, and would not wish to leave me in that condition.
+But, if so, why those tears? No doubt, despite her love for me, the poor
+girl could not make up her mind to give up all the luxury in which
+she had lived until now, and for which she had been so envied, without
+crying over it. I was quite ready to forgive her for such regrets. I
+waited for her impatiently, that I might say to her, as I covered her
+with kisses, that I had guessed the reason of her mysterious absence.
+
+Nevertheless, the night went on, and Marguerite did not return.
+
+My anxiety tightened its circle little by little, and began to oppress
+my head and heart. Perhaps something had happened to her. Perhaps she
+was injured, ill, dead. Perhaps a messenger would arrive with the news
+of some dreadful accident. Perhaps the daylight would find me with the
+same uncertainty and with the same fears.
+
+The idea that Marguerite was perhaps unfaithful to me at the very moment
+when I waited for her in terror at her absence did not return to my
+mind. There must be some cause, independent of her will, to keep her
+away from me, and the more I thought, the more convinced I was that this
+cause could only be some mishap or other. O vanity of man, coming back
+to us in every form!
+
+One o'clock struck. I said to myself that I would wait another hour, but
+that at two o'clock, if Marguerite had not returned, I would set out for
+Paris. Meanwhile I looked about for a book, for I dared not think. Manon
+Lescaut was open on the table. It seemed to me that here and there
+the pages were wet as if with tears. I turned the leaves over and then
+closed the book, for the letters seemed to me void of meaning through
+the veil of my doubts.
+
+Time went slowly. The sky was covered with clouds. An autumn rain lashed
+the windows. The empty bed seemed at moments to assume the aspect of a
+tomb. I was afraid.
+
+I opened the door. I listened, and heard nothing but the voice of the
+wind in the trees. Not a vehicle was to be seen on the road. The half
+hour sounded sadly from the church tower.
+
+I began to fear lest someone should enter. It seemed to me that only a
+disaster could come at that hour and under that sombre sky.
+
+Two o'clock struck. I still waited a little. Only the sound of the bell
+troubled the silence with its monotonous and rhythmical stroke.
+
+At last I left the room, where every object had assumed that melancholy
+aspect which the restless solitude of the heart gives to all its
+surroundings.
+
+In the next room I found Nanine sleeping over her work. At the sound of
+the door, she awoke and asked if her mistress had come in.
+
+"No; but if she comes in, tell her that I was so anxious that I had to
+go to Paris."
+
+"At this hour?"
+
+"Yes.
+
+"But how? You won't find a carriage."
+
+"I will walk."
+
+"But it is raining."
+
+"No matter."
+
+"But madame will be coming back, or if she doesn't come it will be
+time enough in the morning to go and see what has kept her. You will be
+murdered on the way."
+
+"There is no danger, my dear Nanine; I will see you to-morrow."
+
+The good girl went and got me a cloak, put it over my shoulders, and
+offered to wake up Mme. Arnould to see if a vehicle could be obtained;
+but I would hear of nothing, convinced as I was that I should lose, in
+a perhaps fruitless inquiry, more time than I should take to cover half
+the road. Besides, I felt the need of air and physical fatigue in order
+to cool down the over-excitement which possessed me.
+
+I took the key of the flat in the Rue d'Antin, and after saying good-bye
+to Nanine, who came with me as far as the gate, I set out.
+
+At first I began to run, but the earth was muddy with rain, and I
+fatigued myself doubly. At the end of half an hour I was obliged to
+stop, and I was drenched with sweat. I recovered my breath and went on.
+The night was so dark that at every step I feared to dash myself against
+one of the trees on the roadside, which rose up sharply before me like
+great phantoms rushing upon me.
+
+I overtook one or two wagons, which I soon left behind. A carriage was
+going at full gallop toward Bougival. As it passed me the hope came
+to me that Marguerite was in it. I stopped and cried out, "Marguerite!
+Marguerite!" But no one answered and the carriage continued its course.
+I watched it fade away in the distance, and then started on my way
+again. I took two hours to reach the Barriere de l'Etoile. The sight of
+Paris restored my strength, and I ran the whole length of the alley I
+had so often walked.
+
+That night no one was passing; it was like going through the midst of a
+dead city. The dawn began to break. When I reached the Rue d'Antin the
+great city stirred a little before quite awakening. Five o'clock struck
+at the church of Saint Roch at the moment when I entered Marguerite's
+house. I called out my name to the porter, who had had from me enough
+twenty-franc pieces to know that I had the right to call on Mlle.
+Gautier at five in the morning. I passed without difficulty. I might
+have asked if Marguerite was at home, but he might have said "No," and
+I preferred to remain in doubt two minutes longer, for, as long as I
+doubted, there was still hope.
+
+I listened at the door, trying to discover a sound, a movement. Nothing.
+The silence of the country seemed to be continued here. I opened the
+door and entered. All the curtains were hermetically closed. I drew
+those of the dining-room and went toward the bed-room and pushed open
+the door. I sprang at the curtain cord and drew it violently. The
+curtain opened, a faint light made its way in. I rushed to the bed. It
+was empty.
+
+I opened the doors one after another. I visited every room. No one. It
+was enough to drive one mad.
+
+I went into the dressing-room, opened the window, and called Prudence
+several times. Mme. Duvernoy's window remained closed.
+
+I went downstairs to the porter and asked him if Mlle. Gautier had come
+home during the day.
+
+"Yes," answered the man; "with Mme. Duvernoy."
+
+"She left no word for me?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Do you know what they did afterward?"
+
+"They went away in a carriage."
+
+"What sort of a carriage?"
+
+"A private carriage."
+
+What could it all mean?
+
+I rang at the next door.
+
+"Where are you going, sir?" asked the porter, when he had opened to me.
+
+"To Mme. Duvernoy's."
+
+"She has not come back."
+
+"You are sure?"
+
+"Yes, sir; here's a letter even, which was brought for her last night
+and which I have not yet given her."
+
+And the porter showed me a letter which I glanced at mechanically. I
+recognised Marguerite's writing. I took the letter. It was addressed,
+"To Mme. Duvernoy, to forward to M. Duval."
+
+"This letter is for me," I said to the porter, as I showed him the
+address.
+
+"You are M. Duval?" he replied.
+
+"Yes.
+
+"Ah! I remember. You often came to see Mme. Duvernoy."
+
+When I was in the street I broke the seal of the letter. If a
+thunder-bolt had fallen at my feet I should have been less startled than
+I was by what I read.
+
+"By the time you read this letter, Armand, I shall be the mistress of
+another man. All is over between us.
+
+"Go back to your father, my friend, and to your sister, and there, by
+the side of a pure young girl, ignorant of all our miseries, you will
+soon forget what you would have suffered through that lost creature who
+is called Marguerite Gautier, whom you have loved for an instant, and
+who owes to you the only happy moments of a life which, she hopes, will
+not be very long now."
+
+When I had read the last word, I thought I should have gone mad. For
+a moment I was really afraid of falling in the street. A cloud passed
+before my eyes and my blood beat in my temples. At last I came to myself
+a little. I looked about me, and was astonished to see the life of
+others continue without pausing at my distress.
+
+I was not strong enough to endure the blow alone. Then I remembered that
+my father was in the same city, that I might be with him in ten minutes,
+and that, whatever might be the cause of my sorrow, he would share it.
+
+I ran like a madman, like a thief, to the Hotel de Paris; I found the
+key in the door of my father's room; I entered. He was reading. He
+showed so little astonishment at seeing me, that it was as if he was
+expecting me. I flung myself into his arms without saying a word. I gave
+him Marguerite's letter, and, falling on my knees beside his bed, I wept
+hot tears.
+
+
+
+Chapter 23
+
+When the current of life had resumed its course, I could not believe
+that the day which I saw dawning would not be like those which had
+preceded it. There were moments when I fancied that some circumstance,
+which I could not recollect, had obliged me to spend the night away from
+Marguerite, but that, if I returned to Bougival, I should find her again
+as anxious as I had been, and that she would ask me what had detained me
+away from her so long.
+
+When one's existence has contracted a habit, such as that of this love,
+it seems impossible that the habit should be broken without at the same
+time breaking all the other springs of life. I was forced from time to
+time to reread Marguerite's letter, in order to convince myself that I
+had not been dreaming.
+
+My body, succumbing to the moral shock, was incapable of movement.
+Anxiety, the night walk, and the morning's news had prostrated me. My
+father profited by this total prostration of all my faculties to demand
+of me a formal promise to accompany him. I promised all that he asked,
+for I was incapable of sustaining a discussion, and I needed some
+affection to help me to live, after what had happened. I was too
+thankful that my father was willing to console me under such a calamity.
+
+All that I remember is that on that day, about five o'clock, he took me
+with him in a post-chaise. Without a word to me, he had had my luggage
+packed and put up behind the chaise with his own, and so he carried me
+off. I did not realize what I was doing until the town had disappeared
+and the solitude of the road recalled to me the emptiness of my heart.
+Then my tears again began to flow.
+
+My father had realized that words, even from him, would do nothing to
+console me, and he let me weep without saying a word, only sometimes
+pressing my hand, as if to remind me that I had a friend at my side.
+
+At night I slept a little. I dreamed of Marguerite.
+
+I woke with a start, not recalling why I was in the carriage. Then the
+truth came back upon me, and I let my head sink on my breast. I dared
+not say anything to my father. I was afraid he would say, "You see I was
+right when I declared that this woman did not love you." But he did not
+use his advantage, and we reached C. without his having said anything
+to me except to speak of matters quite apart from the event which had
+occasioned my leaving Paris.
+
+When I embraced my sister, I remembered what Marguerite had said about
+her in her letter, and I saw at once how little my sister, good as she
+was, would be able to make me forget my mistress.
+
+Shooting had begun, and my father thought that it would be a distraction
+for me. He got up shooting parties with friends and neighbours. I went
+without either reluctance or enthusiasm, with that sort of apathy into
+which I had sunk since my departure.
+
+We were beating about for game and I was given my post. I put down my
+unloaded gun at my side, and meditated. I watched the clouds pass. I
+let my thought wander over the solitary plains, and from time to time I
+heard someone call to me and point to a hare not ten paces off. None of
+these details escaped my father, and he was not deceived by my exterior
+calm. He was well aware that, broken as I now was, I should some day
+experience a terrible reaction, which might be dangerous, and, without
+seeming to make any effort to console me, he did his utmost to distract
+my thoughts.
+
+My sister, naturally, knew nothing of what had happened, and she could
+not understand how it was that I, who had formerly been so lighthearted,
+had suddenly become so sad and dreamy.
+
+Sometimes, surprising in the midst of my sadness my father's anxious
+scrutiny, I pressed his hand as if to ask him tacitly to forgive me for
+the pain which, in spite of myself, I was giving him.
+
+Thus a month passed, but at the end of that time I could endure it no
+longer. The memory of Marguerite pursued me unceasingly. I had loved,
+I still loved this woman so much that I could not suddenly become
+indifferent to her. I had to love or to hate her. Above all, whatever I
+felt for her, I had to see her again, and at once. This desire possessed
+my mind, and with all the violence of a will which had begun to reassert
+itself in a body so long inert.
+
+It was not enough for me to see Marguerite in a month, a week. I had to
+see her the very next day after the day when the thought had occurred to
+me; and I went to my father and told him that I had been called to Paris
+on business, but that I should return promptly. No doubt he guessed the
+reason of my departure, for he insisted that I should stay, but, seeing
+that if I did not carry out my intention the consequences, in the state
+in which I was, might be fatal, he embraced me, and begged me, almost,
+with tears, to return without delay.
+
+I did not sleep on the way to Paris. Once there, what was I going to
+do? I did not know; I only knew that it must be something connected with
+Marguerite. I went to my rooms to change my clothes, and, as the weather
+was fine and it was still early, I made my way to the Champs-Elysees. At
+the end of half an hour I saw Marguerite's carriage, at some distance,
+coming from the Rond-Point to the Place de la Concorde. She had
+repurchased her horses, for the carriage was just as I was accustomed
+to see it, but she was not in it. Scarcely had I noticed this fact, when
+looking around me, I saw Marguerite on foot, accompanied by a woman whom
+I had never seen.
+
+As she passed me she turned pale, and a nervous smile tightened about
+her lips. For my part, my heart beat violently in my breast; but I
+succeeded in giving a cold expression to my face, as I bowed coldly to
+my former mistress, who just then reached her carriage, into which she
+got with her friend.
+
+I knew Marguerite: this unexpected meeting must certainly have upset
+her. No doubt she had heard that I had gone away, and had thus been
+reassured as to the consequences of our rupture; but, seeing me again
+in Paris, finding herself face to face with me, pale as I was, she must
+have realized that I had not returned without purpose, and she must have
+asked herself what that purpose was.
+
+If I had seen Marguerite unhappy, if, in revenging myself upon her,
+I could have come to her aid, I should perhaps have forgiven her, and
+certainly I should have never dreamt of doing her an injury. But I found
+her apparently happy, someone else had restored to her the luxury which
+I could not give her; her breaking with me seemed to assume a character
+of the basest self-interest; I was lowered in my own esteem as well as
+in my love. I resolved that she should pay for what I had suffered.
+
+I could not be indifferent to what she did, consequently what would hurt
+her the most would be my indifference; it was, therefore, this sentiment
+which I must affect, not only in her eyes, but in the eyes of others.
+
+I tried to put on a smiling countenance, and I went to call on
+Prudence. The maid announced me, and I had to wait a few minutes in
+the drawing-room. At last Mme. Duvernoy appeared and asked me into her
+boudoir; as I seated myself I heard the drawing-room door open, a light
+footstep made the floor creak and the front door was closed violently.
+
+"I am disturbing you," I said to Prudence.
+
+"Not in the least. Marguerite was there. When she heard you announced,
+she made her escape; it was she who has just gone out."
+
+"Is she afraid of me now?"
+
+"No, but she is afraid that you would not wish to see her."
+
+"But why?" I said, drawing my breath with difficulty, for I was choked
+with emotion. "The poor girl left me for her carriage, her furniture,
+and her diamonds; she did quite right, and I don't bear her any grudge.
+I met her to-day," I continued carelessly.
+
+"Where?" asked Prudence, looking at me and seeming to ask herself if
+this was the same man whom she had known so madly in love.
+
+"In the Champs-Elysees. She was with another woman, very pretty. Who is
+she?"
+
+"What was she like?"
+
+"Blonde, slender, with side curls; blue eyes; very elegant."
+
+"Ali! It was Olympe; she is really very pretty."
+
+"Whom does she live with?"
+
+"With nobody; with anybody."
+
+"Where does she live?"
+
+"Rue Troncliet, No.--. Do you want to make love to her?"
+
+"One never knows."
+
+"And Marguerite?"
+
+"I should hardly tell you the truth if I said I think no more about her;
+but I am one of those with whom everything depends on the way in which
+one breaks with them. Now Marguerite ended with me so lightly that I
+realize I was a great fool to have been as much in love with her as I
+was, for I was really very much in love with that girl."
+
+You can imagine the way in which I said that; the sweat broke out on my
+forehead.
+
+"She was very fond of you, you know, and she still is; the proof is,
+that after meeting you to-day, she came straight to tell me about it.
+When she got here she was all of a tremble; I thought she was going to
+faint."
+
+"Well, what did she say?"
+
+"She said, 'He is sure to come here,' and she begged me to ask you to
+forgive her."
+
+"I have forgiven her, you may tell her. She was a good girl; but, after
+all, like the others, and I ought to have expected what happened. I am
+even grateful to her, for I see now what would have happened if I had
+lived with her altogether. It was ridiculous."
+
+"She will be very glad to find that you take it so well. It was quite
+time she left you, my dear fellow. The rascal of an agent to whom she
+had offered to sell her furniture went around to her creditors to find
+out how much she owed; they took fright, and in two days she would have
+been sold up."
+
+"And now it is all paid?"
+
+"More or less."
+
+"And who has supplied the money?"
+
+"The Comte de N. Ah, my dear friend, there are men made on purpose for
+such occasions. To cut a long story short he gave her twenty thousand
+francs, but he has had his way at last. He knows quite well that
+Marguerite is not in love with him; but he is very nice with her all the
+same. As you have seen, he has repurchased her horses, he has taken her
+jewels out of pawn, and he gives her as much money as the duke used to
+give her; if she likes to live quietly, he will stay with her a long
+time."
+
+"And what is she doing? Is she living in Paris altogether?"
+
+"She would never go back to Bougival after you went. I had to go myself
+and see after all her things, and yours, too. I made a package of them
+and you can send here for them. You will find everything, except a
+little case with your initials. Marguerite wanted to keep it. If you
+really want it, I will ask her for it."
+
+"Let her keep it," I stammered, for I felt the tears rise from my heart
+to my eyes at the recollection of the village where I had been so happy,
+and at the thought that Marguerite cared to keep something which had
+belonged to me and would recall me to her. If she had entered at that
+moment my thoughts of vengeance would have disappeared, and I should
+have fallen at her feet.
+
+"For the rest," continued Prudence, "I never saw her as she is now; she
+hardly takes any sleep, she goes to all the balls, she goes to suppers,
+she even drinks. The other day, after a supper, she had to stay in bed
+for a week; and when the doctor let her get up, she began again at the
+risk of her life. Shall you go and see her?"
+
+"What is the good? I came to see you, because you have always been
+charming to me, and I knew you before I ever knew Marguerite. I owe
+it to you that I have been her lover, and also, don't I, that I am her
+lover no longer?"
+
+"Well, I did all I could to get her away from you, and I believe you
+will be thankful to me later on."
+
+"I owe you a double gratitude," I added, rising, for I was disgusted
+with the woman, seeing her take every word I said to her as if it were
+serious.
+
+"You are going?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+I had learned enough.
+
+"When shall I be seeing you?"
+
+"Soon. Good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+Prudence saw me to the door, and I went back to my own rooms with tears
+of rage in my eyes and a desire for vengeance in my heart.
+
+So Marguerite was no different from the others; so the steadfast love
+that she had had for me could not resist the desire of returning to
+her former life, and the need of having a carriage and plunging into
+dissipation. So I said to myself, as I lay awake at night though if I
+had reflected as calmly as I professed to I should have seen in this
+new and turbulent life of Marguerite the attempt to silence a constant
+thought, a ceaseless memory. Unfortunately, evil passion had the upper
+hand, and I only sought for some means of avenging myself on the poor
+creature. Oh, how petty and vile is man when he is wounded in one of his
+narrow passions!
+
+This Olympe whom I had seen was, if not a friend of Marguerite, at all
+events the woman with whom she was most often seen since her return to
+Paris. She was going to give a ball, and, as I took it for granted that
+Marguerite would be there, I tried to get an invitation and succeeded.
+
+When, full of my sorrowful emotions, I arrived at the ball, it was
+already very animated. They were dancing, shouting even, and in one of
+the quadrilles I perceived Marguerite dancing with the Comte de N., who
+seemed proud of showing her off, as if he said to everybody: "This woman
+is mine."
+
+I leaned against the mantel-piece just opposite Marguerite and watched
+her dancing. Her face changed the moment she caught sight of me. I
+saluted her casually with a glance of the eyes and a wave of the hand.
+
+When I reflected that after the ball she would go home, not with me but
+with that rich fool, when I thought of what would follow their return,
+the blood rose to my face, and I felt the need of doing something to
+trouble their relations.
+
+After the contredanse I went up to the mistress of the house, who
+displayed for the benefit of her guests a dazzling bosom and magnificent
+shoulders. She was beautiful, and, from the point of view of figure,
+more beautiful than Marguerite. I realized this fact still more clearly
+from certain glances which Marguerite bestowed upon her while I was
+talking with her. The man who was the lover of such a woman might well
+be as proud as M. de N., and she was beautiful enough to inspire a
+passion not less great than that which Marguerite had inspired in me. At
+that moment she had no lover. It would not be difficult to become so; it
+depended only on showing enough money to attract her attention.
+
+I made up my mind. That woman should be my mistress. I began by dancing
+with her. Half an hour afterward, Marguerite, pale as death, put on her
+pelisse and left the ball.
+
+
+
+Chapter 24
+
+It was something already, but it was not enough. I saw the hold which I
+had upon this woman, and I took a cowardly advantage of it.
+
+When I think that she is dead now, I ask myself if God will ever forgive
+me for the wrong I did her.
+
+After the supper, which was noisy as could be, there was gambling. I sat
+by the side of Olympe and put down my money so recklessly that she could
+not but notice me. In an instant I had gained one hundred and fifty or
+two hundred louis, which I spread out before me on the table, and on
+which she fastened her eyes greedily.
+
+I was the only one not completely absorbed by the game, and able to pay
+her some attention. All the rest of the night I gained, and it was I
+who gave her money to play, for she had lost all she had before her and
+probably all she had in the house.
+
+At five in the morning, the guests departed. I had gained three hundred
+louis.
+
+All the players were already on their way downstairs; I was the only
+one who had remained behind, and as I did not know any of them, no one
+noticed it. Olympe herself was lighting the way, and I was going to
+follow the others, when, turning back, I said to her:
+
+"I must speak to you."
+
+"To-morrow," she said.
+
+"No, now."
+
+"What have you to say?"
+
+"You will see."
+
+And I went back into the room.
+
+"You have lost," I said.
+
+"Yes.
+
+"All that you had in the house?"
+
+She hesitated.
+
+"Be frank."
+
+"Well, it is true."
+
+"I have won three hundred louis. Here they are, if you will let me stay
+here to-night."
+
+And I threw the gold on the table.
+
+"And why this proposition?"
+
+"Because I am in love with you, of course."
+
+"No, but because you love Marguerite, and you want to have your revenge
+upon her by becoming my lover. You don't deceive a woman like me, my
+dear friend; unluckily, I am still too young and too good-looking to
+accept the part that you offer me."
+
+"So you refuse?"
+
+"Yes.
+
+"Would you rather take me for nothing? It is I who wouldn't accept then.
+Think it over, my dear Olympe; if I had sent someone to offer you these
+three hundred louis on my behalf, on the conditions I attach to them,
+you would have accepted. I preferred to speak to you myself. Accept
+without inquiring into my reasons; say to yourself that you are
+beautiful, and that there is nothing surprising in my being in love with
+you."
+
+Marguerite was a woman in the same position as Olympe, and yet I should
+never have dared say to her the first time I met her what I had said to
+the other woman. I loved Marguerite. I saw in her instincts which were
+lacking in the other, and at the very moment in which I made my bargain,
+I felt a disgust toward the woman with whom I was making it.
+
+She accepted, of course, in the end, and at midday I left her house as
+her lover; but I quitted her without a recollection of the caresses
+and of the words of love which she had felt bound to shower upon me in
+return for the six thousand francs which I left with her. And yet there
+were men who had ruined themselves for that woman.
+
+From that day I inflicted on Marguerite a continual persecution. Olympe
+and she gave up seeing one another, as you might imagine. I gave my
+new mistress a carriage and jewels. I gambled, I committed every
+extravagance which could be expected of a man in love with such a woman
+as Olympe. The report of my new infatuation was immediately spread
+abroad.
+
+Prudence herself was taken in, and finally thought that I had completely
+forgotten Marguerite. Marguerite herself, whether she guessed my motive
+or was deceived like everybody else, preserved a perfect dignity in
+response to the insults which I heaped upon her daily. Only, she seemed
+to suffer, for whenever I met her she was more and more pale, more
+and more sad. My love for her, carried to the point at which it was
+transformed into hatred, rejoiced at the sight of her daily sorrow.
+Often, when my cruelty toward her became infamous, Marguerite lifted
+upon me such appealing eyes that I blushed for the part I was playing,
+and was ready to implore her forgiveness.
+
+But my repentance was only of a moment's duration, and Olympe, who had
+finally put aside all self-respect, and discovered that by annoying
+Marguerite she could get from me whatever she wanted, constantly stirred
+up my resentment against her, and insulted her whenever she found an
+opportunity, with the cowardly persistence of a woman licensed by the
+authority of a man.
+
+At last Marguerite gave up going to balls or theatres, for fear of
+meeting Olympe and me. Then direct impertinences gave way to anonymous
+letters, and there was not a shameful thing which I did not encourage
+my mistress to relate and which I did not myself relate in reference to
+Marguerite.
+
+To reach such a point I must have been literally mad. I was like a man
+drunk upon bad wine, who falls into one of those nervous exaltations in
+which the hand is capable of committing a crime without the head knowing
+anything about it. In the midst of it all I endured a martyrdom. The
+not disdainful calm, the not contemptuous dignity with which Marguerite
+responded to all my attacks, and which raised her above me in my own
+eyes, enraged me still more against her.
+
+One evening Olympe had gone somewhere or other, and had met Marguerite,
+who for once had not spared the foolish creature, so that she had had to
+retire in confusion. Olympe returned in a fury, and Marguerite fainted
+and had to be carried out. Olympe related to me what had happened,
+declared that Marguerite, seeing her alone, had revenged herself upon
+her because she was my mistress, and that I must write and tell her to
+respect the woman whom I loved, whether I was present or absent.
+
+I need not tell you that I consented, and that I put into the letter
+which I sent to her address the same day, everything bitter, shameful,
+and cruel that I could think of.
+
+This time the blow was more than the unhappy creature could endure
+without replying. I felt sure that an answer would come, and I resolved
+not to go out all day. About two there was a ring, and Prudence entered.
+
+I tried to assume an indifferent air as I asked her what had brought
+her; but that day Mme. Duvernoy was not in a laughing humour, and in a
+really moved voice she said to me that since my return, that is to say
+for about three weeks, I had left no occasion untried which could give
+pain to Marguerite, that she was completely upset by it, and that the
+scene of last night and my angry letter of the morning had forced her to
+take to her bed. In short, without making any reproach, Marguerite
+sent to ask me for a little pity, since she had no longer the moral or
+physical strength to endure what I was making her suffer.
+
+"That Mlle. Gautier," I said to Prudence, "should turn me out of her own
+house is quite reasonable, but that she should insult the woman whom I
+love, under the pretence that this woman is my mistress, is a thing I
+will never permit."
+
+"My friend," said Prudence, "you are under the influence of a woman who
+has neither heart nor sense; you are in love with her, it is true, but
+that is not a reason for torturing a woman who can not defend herself."
+
+"Let Mlle. Gautier send me her Comte de N. and the sides will be equal."
+
+"You know very well that she will not do that. So, my dear Armand, let
+her alone. If you saw her you would be ashamed of the way in which you
+are treating her. She is white, she coughs--she won't last long now."
+
+And Prudence held out her hand to me, adding:
+
+"Come and see her; it will make her very happy."
+
+"I have no desire to meet M. de N."
+
+"M. de N. is never there. She can not endure him."
+
+"If Marguerite wishes to see me, she knows where I live; let her come to
+see me, but, for my part, I will never put foot in the Rue d'Antin."
+
+"Will you receive her well?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Well, I am sure that she will come."
+
+"Let her come."
+
+"Shall you be out to-day?"
+
+"I shall be at home all the evening."
+
+"I will tell her."
+
+And Prudence left me.
+
+I did not even write to tell Olympe not to expect me. I never troubled
+much about her, scarcely going to see her one night a week. She consoled
+herself, I believe, with an actor from some theatre or other.
+
+I went out for dinner and came back almost immediately. I had a fire lit
+in my room and I told Joseph he could go out.
+
+I can give you no idea of the different impressions which agitated me
+during the hour in which I waited; but when, toward nine o'clock, I
+heard a ring, they thronged together into one such emotion, that, as I
+opened the door, I was obliged to lean against the wall to keep myself
+from falling.
+
+Fortunately the anteroom was in half darkness, and the change in my
+countenance was less visible. Marguerite entered.
+
+She was dressed in black and veiled. I could scarcely recognise her face
+through the veil. She went into the drawing-room and raised her veil.
+She was pale as marble.
+
+"I am here, Armand," she said; "you wished to see me and I have come."
+
+And letting her head fall on her hands, she burst into tears.
+
+I went up to her.
+
+"What is the matter?" I said to her in a low voice.
+
+She pressed my hand without a word, for tears still veiled her voice.
+But after a few minutes, recovering herself a little, she said to me:
+
+"You have been very unkind to me, Armand, and I have done nothing to
+you."
+
+"Nothing?" I answered, with a bitter smile.
+
+"Nothing but what circumstances forced me to do."
+
+I do not know if you have ever in your life experienced, or if you will
+ever experience, what I felt at the sight of Marguerite.
+
+The last time she had come to see me she had sat in the same place where
+she was now sitting; only, since then, she had been the mistress of
+another man, other kisses than mine had touched her lips, toward which,
+in spite of myself, my own reached out, and yet I felt that I loved this
+woman as much, more perhaps, than I had ever loved her.
+
+It was difficult for me to begin the conversation on the subject which
+brought her. Marguerite no doubt realized it, for she went on:
+
+"I have come to trouble you, Armand, for I have two things to ask:
+pardon for what I said yesterday to Mlle. Olympe, and pity for what you
+are perhaps still ready to do to me. Intentionally or not, since your
+return you have given me so much pain that I should be incapable now of
+enduring a fourth part of what I have endured till now. You will have
+pity on me, won't you? And you will understand that a man who is not
+heartless has other nobler things to do than to take his revenge upon a
+sick and sad woman like me. See, take my hand. I am in a fever. I left
+my bed to come to you, and ask, not for your friendship, but for your
+indifference."
+
+I took Marguerite's hand. It was burning, and the poor woman shivered
+under her fur cloak.
+
+I rolled the arm-chair in which she was sitting up to the fire.
+
+"Do you think, then, that I did not suffer," said I, "on that night
+when, after waiting for you in the country, I came to look for you in
+Paris, and found nothing but the letter which nearly drove me mad? How
+could you have deceived me, Marguerite, when I loved you so much?
+
+"Do not speak of that, Armand; I did not come to speak of that. I wanted
+to see you only not an enemy, and I wanted to take your hand once more.
+You have a mistress; she is young, pretty, you love her they say. Be
+happy with her and forget me."
+
+"And you. You are happy, no doubt?"
+
+"Have I the face of a happy woman, Armand? Do not mock my sorrow, you,
+who know better than anyone what its cause and its depth are."
+
+"It only depended on you not to have been unhappy at all, if you are as
+you say."
+
+"No, my friend; circumstances were stronger than my will. I obeyed,
+not the instincts of a light woman, as you seem to say, but a serious
+necessity, and reasons which you will know one day, and which will make
+you forgive me."
+
+"Why do you not tell me those reasons to-day?"
+
+"Because they would not bring about an impossible reunion between us,
+and they would separate you perhaps from those from whom you must not be
+separated."
+
+"Who do you mean?"
+
+"I can not tell you."
+
+"Then you are lying to me."
+
+Marguerite rose and went toward the door. I could not behold this silent
+and expressive sorrow without being touched, when I compared in my mind
+this pale and weeping woman with the madcap who had made fun of me at
+the Opera Comique.
+
+"You shall not go," I said, putting myself in front of the door.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because, in spite of what you have done to me, I love you always, and I
+want you to stay here."
+
+"To turn me out to-morrow? No; it is impossible. Our destinies are
+separate; do not try to reunite them. You will despise me perhaps, while
+now you can only hate me."
+
+"No, Marguerite," I cried, feeling all my love and all my desire
+reawaken at the contact of this woman. "No, I will forget everything,
+and we will be happy as we promised one another that we would be."
+
+Marguerite shook her head doubtfully, and said:
+
+"Am I not your slave, your dog? Do with me what you will. Take me; I am
+yours."
+
+And throwing off her cloak and hat, she flung them on the sofa, and
+began hurriedly to undo the front of her dress, for, by one of those
+reactions so frequent in her malady, the blood rushed to her head and
+stifled her. A hard, dry cough followed.
+
+"Tell my coachman," she said, "to go back with the carriage."
+
+I went down myself and sent him away. When I returned Marguerite was
+lying in front of the fire, and her teeth chattered with the cold.
+
+I took her in my arms. I undressed her, without her making a movement,
+and carried her, icy cold, to the bed. Then I sat beside her and tried
+to warm her with my caresses. She did not speak a word, but smiled at
+me.
+
+It was a strange night. All Marguerite's life seemed to have passed into
+the kisses with which she covered me, and I loved her so much that in
+my transports of feverish love I asked myself whether I should not kill
+her, so that she might never belong to another.
+
+A month of love like that, and there would have remained only the corpse
+of heart or body.
+
+The dawn found us both awake. Marguerite was livid white. She did not
+speak a word. From time to time, big tears rolled from her eyes, and
+stayed upon her cheeks, shining like diamonds. Her thin arms opened,
+from time to time, to hold me fast, and fell back helplessly upon the
+bed.
+
+For a moment it seemed to me as if I could forget all that had passed
+since I had left Bougival, and I said to Marguerite:
+
+"Shall we go away and leave Paris?"
+
+"No, no!" she said, almost with affright; "we should be too unhappy. I
+can do no more to make you happy, but while there is a breath of life in
+me, I will be the slave of your fancies. At whatever hour of the day or
+night you will, come, and I will be yours; but do not link your future
+any more with mine, you would be too unhappy and you would make me too
+unhappy. I shall still be pretty for a while; make the most of it, but
+ask nothing more."
+
+When she had gone, I was frightened at the solitude in which she left
+me. Two hours afterward I was still sitting on the side of the bed,
+looking at the pillow which kept the imprint of her form, and asking
+myself what was to become of me, between my love and my jealousy.
+
+At five o'clock, without knowing what I was going to do, I went to the
+Rue d'Antin.
+
+Nanine opened to me.
+
+"Madame can not receive you," she said in an embarrassed way.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because M. le Comte de N. is there, and he has given orders to let no
+one in."
+
+"Quite so," I stammered; "I forgot."
+
+I went home like a drunken man, and do you know what I did during the
+moment of jealous delirium which was long enough for the shameful thing
+I was going to do? I said to myself that the woman was laughing at me; I
+saw her alone with the count, saying over to him the same words that she
+had said to me in the night, and taking a five-hundred-franc note I sent
+it to her with these words:
+
+"You went away so suddenly that I forgot to pay you. Here is the price
+of your night."
+
+Then when the letter was sent I went out as if to free myself from the
+instantaneous remorse of this infamous action.
+
+I went to see Olympe, whom I found trying on dresses, and when we were
+alone she sang obscene songs to amuse me. She was the very type of the
+shameless, heartless, senseless courtesan, for me at least, for perhaps
+some men might have dreamed of her as I dreamed of Marguerite. She asked
+me for money. I gave it to her, and, free then to go, I returned home.
+
+Marguerite had not answered.
+
+I need not tell you in what state of agitation I spent the next day. At
+half past nine a messenger brought me an envelope containing my letter
+and the five-hundred-franc note, not a word more.
+
+"Who gave you this?" I asked the man.
+
+"A lady who was starting with her maid in the next mail for Boulogne,
+and who told me not to take it until the coach was out of the
+courtyard."
+
+I rushed to the Rue d'Antin.
+
+"Madame left for England at six o'clock," said the porter.
+
+There was nothing to hold me in Paris any longer, neither hate nor love.
+I was exhausted by this series of shocks. One of my friends was setting
+out on a tour in the East. I told my father I should like to accompany
+him; my father gave me drafts and letters of introduction, and eight or
+ten days afterward I embarked at Marseilles.
+
+It was at Alexandria that I learned from an attache at the embassy, whom
+I had sometimes seen at Marguerite's, that the poor girl was seriously
+ill.
+
+I then wrote her the letter which she answered in the way you know; I
+received it at Toulon.
+
+I started at once, and you know the rest.
+
+Now you have only to read a few sheets which Julie Duprat gave me; they
+are the best commentary on what I have just told you.
+
+
+
+Chapter 25
+
+Armand, tired by this long narrative, often interrupted by his tears,
+put his two hands over his forehead and closed his eyes to think, or
+to try to sleep, after giving me the pages written by the hand of
+Marguerite. A few minutes after, a more rapid breathing told me that
+Armand slept, but that light sleep which the least sound banishes.
+
+This is what I read; I copy it without adding or omitting a syllable:
+
+To-day is the 15th December. I have been ill three or four days. This
+morning I stayed in bed. The weather is dark, I am sad; there is no one
+by me. I think of you, Armand. And you, where are you, while I write
+these lines? Far from Paris, far, far, they tell me, and perhaps you
+have already forgotten Marguerite. Well, be happy; I owe you the only
+happy moments in my life.
+
+I can not help wanting to explain all my conduct to you, and I have
+written you a letter; but, written by a girl like me, such a letter
+might seem to be a lie, unless death had sanctified it by its authority,
+and, instead of a letter, it were a confession.
+
+To-day I am ill; I may die of this illness, for I have always had the
+presentiment that I shall die young. My mother died of consumption, and
+the way I have always lived could but increase the only heritage she
+ever left me. But I do not want to die without clearing up for you
+everything about me; that is, if, when you come back, you will still
+trouble yourself about the poor girl whom you loved before you went
+away.
+
+This is what the letter contained; I shall like writing it over again,
+so as to give myself another proof of my own justification.
+
+You remember, Armand, how the arrival of your father surprised us at
+Bougival; you remember the involuntary fright that his arrival caused
+me, and the scene which took place between you and him, which you told
+me of in the evening.
+
+Next day, when you were at Paris, waiting for your father, and he did
+not return, a man came to the door and handed in a letter from M. Duval.
+
+His letter, which I inclose with this, begged me, in the most serious
+terms, to keep you away on the following day, on some excuse or
+other, and to see your father, who wished to speak to me, and asked me
+particularly not to say anything to you about it.
+
+You know how I insisted on your returning to Paris next day.
+
+You had only been gone an hour when your father presented himself. I
+won't say what impression his severe face made upon me. Your father had
+the old theory that a courtesan is a being without heart or reason, a
+sort of machine for coining gold, always ready, like the machine,
+to bruise the hand that gives her everything, and to tear in pieces,
+without pity or discernment, those who set her in motion.
+
+Your father had written me a very polite letter, in order that I might
+consent to see him; he did not present himself quite as he had written.
+His manner at first was so stiff, insolent, and even threatening, that I
+had to make him understand that I was in my own house, and that I had no
+need to render him an account of my life, except because of the sincere
+affection which I had for his son.
+
+M. Duval calmed down a little, but still went on to say that he could
+not any longer allow his son to ruin himself over me; that I was
+beautiful, it was true, but, however beautiful I might be, I ought not
+to make use of my beauty to spoil the future of a young man by such
+expenditure as I was causing.
+
+At that there was only one thing to do, to show him the proof that since
+I was your mistress I had spared no sacrifice to be faithful to you
+without asking for more money than you had to give me. I showed him the
+pawn tickets, the receipts of the people to whom I had sold what I could
+not pawn; I told him of my resolve to part with my furniture in order
+to pay my debts, and live with you without being a too heavy expense. I
+told him of our happiness, of how you had shown me the possibility of
+a quieter and happier life, and he ended by giving in to the evidence,
+offering me his hand, and asking pardon for the way in which he had at
+first approached me.
+
+Then he said to me:
+
+"So, madame, it is not by remonstrances or by threats, but by
+entreaties, that I must endeavour to obtain from you a greater sacrifice
+than you have yet made for my son."
+
+I trembled at this beginning.
+
+Your father came over to me, took both my hands, and continued in an
+affectionate voice:
+
+"My child, do not take what I have to say to you amiss; only remember
+that there are sometimes in life cruel necessities for the heart, but
+that they must be submitted to. You are good, your soul has generosity
+unknown to many women who perhaps despise you, and are less worthy than
+you. But remember that there is not only the mistress, but the family;
+that besides love there are duties; that to the age of passion succeeds
+the age when man, if he is to be respected, must plant himself solidly
+in a serious position. My son has no fortune, and yet he is ready to
+abandon to you the legacy of his mother. If he accepted from you the
+sacrifice which you are on the point of making, his honour and dignity
+would require him to give you, in exchange for it, this income, which
+would always put you out of danger of adversity. But he can not accept
+this sacrifice, because the world, which does not know you, would give a
+wrong interpretation to this acceptance, and such an interpretation must
+not tarnish the name which we bear. No one would consider whether
+Armand loves you, whether you love him, whether this mutual love means
+happiness to him and redemption to you; they would see only one thing,
+that Armand Duval allowed a kept woman (forgive me, my child, for what
+I am forced to say to you) to sell all she had for him. Then the day of
+reproaches and regrets would arrive, be sure, for you or for others, and
+you would both bear a chain that you could not sever. What would you do
+then? Your youth would be lost, my son's future destroyed; and I, his
+father, should receive from only one of my children the recompense that
+I look for from both.
+
+"You are young, beautiful, life will console you; you are noble, and the
+memory of a good deed will redeem you from many past deeds. During the
+six months that he has known you Armand has forgotten me. I wrote to him
+four times, and he has never once replied. I might have died and he not
+known it!
+
+"Whatever may be your resolution of living otherwise than as you have
+lived, Armand, who loves you, will never consent to the seclusion to
+which his modest fortune would condemn you, and to which your beauty
+does not entitle you. Who knows what he would do then! He has gambled,
+I know; without telling you of it, I know also, but, in a moment of
+madness, he might have lost part of what I have saved, during many
+years, for my daughter's portion, for him, and for the repose of my old
+age. What might have happened may yet happen.
+
+"Are you sure, besides, that the life which you are giving up for him
+will never again come to attract you? Are you sure, you who have loved
+him, that you will never love another? Would you not-suffer on seeing
+the hindrances set by your love to your lover's life, hindrances for
+which you would be powerless to console him, if, with age, thoughts of
+ambition should succeed to dreams of love? Think over all that, madame.
+You love Armand; prove it to him by the sole means which remains to you
+of yet proving it to him, by sacrificing your love to his future. No
+misfortune has yet arrived, but one will arrive, and perhaps a greater
+one than those which I foresee. Armand might become jealous of a man who
+has loved you; he might provoke him, fight, be killed. Think, then, what
+you would suffer in the presence of a father who should call on you to
+render an account for the life of his son!
+
+"Finally, my dear child, let me tell you all, for I have not yet
+told you all, let me tell you what has brought me to Paris. I have a
+daughter, as I have told you, young, beautiful, pure as an angel. She
+loves, and she, too, has made this love the dream of her life. I wrote
+all that to Armand, but, absorbed in you, he made no reply. Well, my
+daughter is about to marry. She is to marry the man whom she loves; she
+enters an honourable family, which requires that mine has to be no less
+honourable. The family of the man who is to become my son-in-law has
+learned what manner of life Armand is leading in Paris, and has declared
+to me that the marriage must be broken off if Armand continues this
+life. The future of a child who has done nothing against you, and who
+has the right of looking forward to a happy future, is in your hands.
+Have you the right, have you the strength, to shatter it? In the name of
+your love and of your repentance, Marguerite, grant me the happiness of
+my child."
+
+I wept silently, my friend, at all these reflections which I had so
+often made, and which, in the mouth of your father, took a yet more
+serious reality. I said to myself all that your father dared not say to
+me, though it had come to his lips twenty times: that I was, after all,
+only a kept woman, and that whatever excuse I gave for our liaison, it
+would always look like calculation on my part; that my past life left
+me no right to dream of such a future, and that I was accepting
+responsibilities for which my habits and reputation were far from giving
+any guarantee. In short, I loved you, Armand.
+
+The paternal way in which M. Duval had spoken to me; the pure memories
+that he awakened in me; the respect of this old man, which I would gain;
+yours, which I was sure of gaining later on: all that called up in my
+heart thoughts which raised me in my own eyes with a sort of holy pride,
+unknown till then. When I thought that one day this old man, who was now
+imploring me for the future of his son, would bid his daughter mingle my
+name with her prayers, as the name of a mysterious friend, I seemed to
+become transformed, and I felt a pride in myself.
+
+The exaltation of the moment perhaps exaggerated the truth of these
+impressions, but that was what I felt, friend, and these new feelings
+silenced the memory of the happy days I had spent with you.
+
+"Tell me, sir," I said to your father, wiping away my tears, "do you
+believe that I love your son?"
+
+"Yes," said M. Duval.
+
+"With a disinterested love?"
+
+"Yes.
+
+"Do you believe that I had made this love the hope, the dream, the
+forgiveness--of my life?"
+
+"Implicitly."
+
+"Well, sir, embrace me once, as you would embrace your daughter, and I
+swear to you that that kiss, the only chaste kiss I have ever had, will
+make me strong against my love, and that within a week your son will be
+once more at your side, perhaps unhappy for a time, but cured forever."
+
+"You are a noble child," replied your father, kissing me on the
+forehead, "and you are making an attempt for which God will reward you;
+but I greatly fear that you will have no influence upon my son."
+
+"Oh, be at rest, sir; he will hate me."
+
+I had to set up between us, as much for me as for you, an insurmountable
+barrier.
+
+I wrote to Prudence to say that I accepted the proposition of the Comte
+de N., and that she was to tell him that I would sup with her and him.
+I sealed the letter, and, without telling him what it contained, asked
+your father to have it forwarded to its address on reaching Paris.
+
+He inquired of me what it contained.
+
+"Your son's welfare," I answered.
+
+Your father embraced me once more. I felt two grateful tears on my
+forehead, like the baptism of my past faults, and at the moment when I
+consented to give myself up to another man I glowed with pride at the
+thought of what I was redeeming by this new fault.
+
+It was quite natural, Armand. You told me that your father was the most
+honest man in the world.
+
+M. Duval returned to his carriage, and set out for Paris.
+
+I was only a woman, and when I saw you again I could not help weeping,
+but I did not give way.
+
+Did I do right? That is what I ask myself to-day, as I lie ill in my
+bed, that I shall never leave, perhaps, until I am dead.
+
+You are witness of what I felt as the hour of our separation approached;
+your father was no longer there to support me, and there was a moment
+when I was on the point of confessing everything to you, so terrified
+was I at the idea that you were going to bate and despise me.
+
+One thing which you will not believe, perhaps, Armand, is that I prayed
+God to give me strength; and what proves that he accepted my sacrifice
+is that he gave me the strength for which I prayed.
+
+At supper I still had need of aid, for I could not think of what I was
+going to do, so much did I fear that my courage would fail me. Who would
+ever have said that I, Marguerite Gautier, would have suffered so at the
+mere thought of a new lover? I drank for forgetfulness, and when I woke
+next day I was beside the count.
+
+That is the whole truth, friend. Judge me and pardon me, as I have
+pardoned you for all the wrong that you have done me since that day.
+
+
+
+Chapter 26
+
+What followed that fatal night you know as well as I; but what you can
+not know, what you can not suspect, is what I have suffered since our
+separation.
+
+I heard that your father had taken you away with him, but I felt sure
+that you could not live away from me for long, and when I met you in the
+Champs-Elysees, I was a little upset, but by no means surprised.
+
+Then began that series of days; each of them brought me a fresh insult
+from you. I received them all with a kind of joy, for, besides proving
+to me that you still loved me, it seemed to me as if the more you
+persecuted me the more I should be raised in your eyes when you came to
+know the truth.
+
+Do not wonder at my joy in martyrdom, Armand; your love for me had
+opened my heart to noble enthusiasm.
+
+Still, I was not so strong as that quite at once.
+
+Between the time of the sacrifice made for you and the time of your
+return a long while elapsed, during which I was obliged to have recourse
+to physical means in order not to go mad, and in order to be blinded and
+deafened in the whirl of life into which I flung myself. Prudence
+has told you (has she not?) how I went to all the fetes and balls and
+orgies. I had a sort of hope that I should kill myself by all these
+excesses, and I think it will not be long before this hope is realized.
+My health naturally got worse and worse, and when I sent Mme. Duvernoy
+to ask you for pity I was utterly worn out, body and soul.
+
+I will not remind you, Armand, of the return you made for the last proof
+of love that I gave you, and of the outrage by which you drove away a
+dying woman, who could not resist your voice when you asked her for a
+night of love, and who, like a fool, thought for one instant that she
+might again unite the past with the present. You had the right to do
+what you did, Armand; people have not always put so high a price on a
+night of mine!
+
+I left everything after that. Olympe has taken my place with the Comte
+de N., and has told him, I hear, the reasons for my leaving him. The
+Comte de G. was at London. He is one of those men who give just enough
+importance to making love to women like me for it to be an agreeable
+pastime, and who are thus able to remain friends with women, not hating
+them because they have never been jealous of them, and he is, too, one
+of those grand seigneurs who open only a part of their hearts to us, but
+the whole of their purses. It was of him that I immediately thought. I
+joined him in London. He received me as kindly as possible, but he
+was the lover there of a woman in society, and he feared to compromise
+himself if he were seen with me. He introduced me to his friends, who
+gave a supper in my honour, after which one of them took me home with
+him.
+
+What else was there for me to do, my friend? If I had killed myself it
+would have burdened your life, which ought to be happy, with a needless
+remorse; and then, what is the good of killing oneself when one is so
+near dying already?
+
+I became a body without a soul, a thing without a thought; I lived for
+some time in that automatic way; then I returned to Paris, and asked
+after you; I heard then that you were gone on a long voyage. There was
+nothing left to hold me to life. My existence became what it had been
+two years before I knew you. I tried to win back the duke, but I had
+offended him too deeply. Old men are not patient, no doubt because they
+realize that they are not eternal. I got weaker every day. I was pale
+and sad and thinner than ever. Men who buy love examine the goods before
+taking them. At Paris there were women in better health, and not so thin
+as I was; I was rather forgotten. That is all the past up to yesterday.
+
+Now I am seriously ill. I have written to the duke to ask him for money,
+for I have none, and the creditors have returned, and come to me with
+their bills with pitiless perseverance. Will the duke answer? Why are
+you not in Paris, Armand? You would come and see me, and your visits
+would do me good.
+
+December 20.
+
+The weather is horrible; it is snowing, and I am alone. I have been in
+such a fever for the last three days that I could not write you a word.
+No news, my friend; every day I hope vaguely for a letter from you, but
+it does not come, and no doubt it will never come. Only men are strong
+enough not to forgive. The duke has not answered.
+
+Prudence is pawning my things again.
+
+I have been spitting blood all the time. Oh, you would be sorry for me
+if you could see me. You are indeed happy to be under a warm sky, and
+not, like me, with a whole winter of ice on your chest. To-day I got up
+for a little while, and looked out through the curtains of my window,
+and watched the life of Paris passing below, the life with which I have
+now nothing more to do. I saw the faces of some people I knew, passing
+rapidly, joyous and careless. Not one lifted his eyes to my window.
+However, a few young men have come to inquire for me. Once before I was
+ill, and you, though you did not know me, though you had had nothing
+from me but an impertinence the day I met you first, you came to inquire
+after me every day. We spent six months together. I had all the love for
+you that a woman's heart can hold and give, and you are far away, you
+are cursing me, and there is not a word of consolation from you. But it
+is only chance that has made you leave me, I am sure, for if you were at
+Paris, you would not leave my bedside.
+
+December 25.
+
+My doctor tells me I must not write every day. And indeed my memories
+only increase my fever, but yesterday I received a letter which did me
+good, more because of what it said than by the material help which it
+contained. I can write to you, then, to-day. This letter is from your
+father, and this is what it says:
+
+"MADAME: I have just learned that you are ill. If I were at Paris I
+would come and ask after you myself; if my son were here I would send
+him; but I can not leave C., and Armand is six or seven hundred leagues
+from here; permit me, then, simply to write to you, madame, to tell
+you how pained I am to hear of your illness, and believe in my sincere
+wishes for your speedy recovery.
+
+"One of my good friends, M. H., will call on you; will you kindly receive
+him? I have intrusted him with a commission, the result of which I await
+impatiently.
+
+"Believe me, madame,
+
+"Yours most faithfully."
+
+
+This is the letter he sent me. Your father has a noble heart; love him
+well, my friend, for there are few men so worthy of being loved.
+This paper signed by his name has done me more good than all the
+prescriptions of our great doctor.
+
+This morning M. H. called. He seemed much embarrassed by the delicate
+mission which M. Duval had intrusted to him. As a matter of fact, he
+came to bring me three thousand francs from your father. I wanted to
+refuse at first, but M. H. told me that my refusal would annoy M. Duval,
+who had authorized him to give me this sum now, and later on whatever I
+might need. I accepted it, for, coming from your father, it could not be
+exactly taking alms. If I am dead when you come back, show your father
+what I have written for him, and tell him that in writing these lines
+the poor woman to whom he was kind enough to write so consoling a letter
+wept tears of gratitude and prayed God for him.
+
+January 4.
+
+I have passed some terrible days. I never knew the body could suffer so.
+Oh, my past life! I pay double for it now.
+
+There has been someone to watch by me every night; I can not breathe.
+What remains of my poor existence is shared between being delirious and
+coughing.
+
+The dining-room is full of sweets and all sorts of presents that my
+friends have brought. Some of them, I dare say, are hoping that I shall
+be their mistress later on. If they could see what sickness has made of
+me, they would go away in terror.
+
+Prudence is giving her New Year's presents with those I have received.
+
+There is a thaw, and the doctor says that I may go out in a few days if
+the fine weather continues.
+
+January 8.
+
+I went out yesterday in my carriage. The weather was lovely. The
+Champs-Elysees was full of people. It was like the first smile of
+spring. Everything about me had a festal air. I never knew before that a
+ray of sunshine could contain so much joy, sweetness, and consolation.
+
+I met almost all the people I knew, all happy, all absorbed in their
+pleasures. How many happy people don't even know that they are happy!
+Olympe passed me in an elegant carriage that M. de N. has given her. She
+tried to insult me by her look. She little knows how far I am from such
+things now. A nice fellow, whom I have known for a long time, asked me
+if I would have supper with him and one of his friends, who, he said,
+was very anxious to make my acquaintance. I smiled sadly and gave him my
+hand, burning with fever. I never saw such an astonished countenance.
+
+I came in at four, and had quite an appetite for my dinner. Going out
+has done me good. If I were only going to get well! How the sight of the
+life and happiness of others gives a desire of life to those who, only
+the night before, in the solitude of their soul and in the shadow of
+their sick-room, only wanted to die soon!
+
+January 10.
+
+The hope of getting better was only a dream. I am back in bed again,
+covered with plasters which burn me. If I were to offer the body that
+people paid so dear for once, how much would they give, I wonder,
+to-day?
+
+We must have done something very wicked before we were born, or else we
+must be going to be very happy indeed when we are dead, for God to let
+this life have all the tortures of expiation and all the sorrows of an
+ordeal.
+
+January 12.
+
+I am always ill.
+
+The Comte de N. sent me some money yesterday. I did not keep it. I won't
+take anything from that man. It is through him that you are not here.
+
+Oh, that good time at Bougival! Where is it now?
+
+If I come out of this room alive I will make a pilgrimage to the house
+we lived in together, but I will never leave it until I am dead.
+
+Who knows if I shall write to you to-morrow?
+
+January 25.
+
+I have not slept for eleven nights. I am suffocated. I imagine every
+moment that I am going to die. The doctor has forbidden me to touch
+a pen. Julie Duprat, who is looking after me, lets me write these
+few lines to you. Will you not come back before I die? Is it all over
+between us forever? It seems to me as if I should get well if you came.
+What would be the good of getting well?
+
+January 28.
+
+This morning I was awakened by a great noise. Julie, who slept in
+my room, ran into the dining-room. I heard men's voices, and hers
+protesting against them in vain. She came back crying.
+
+They had come to seize my things. I told her to let what they call
+justice have its way. The bailiff came into my room with his hat on. He
+opened the drawers, wrote down what he saw, and did not even seem to
+be aware that there was a dying woman in the bed that fortunately the
+charity of the law leaves me.
+
+He said, indeed, before going, that I could appeal within nine days,
+but he left a man behind to keep watch. My God! what is to become of me?
+This scene has made me worse than I was before. Prudence wanted to go
+and ask your father's friend for money, but I would not let her.
+
+I received your letter this morning. I was in need of it. Will my answer
+reach you in time? Will you ever see me again? This is a happy day, and
+it has made me forget all the days I have passed for the last six weeks.
+I seem as if I am better, in spite of the feeling of sadness under the
+impression of which I replied to you.
+
+After all, no one is unhappy always.
+
+When I think that it may happen to me not to die, for you to come back,
+for me to see the spring again, for you still to love me, and for us to
+begin over again our last year's life!
+
+Fool that I am! I can scarcely hold the pen with which I write to you of
+this wild dream of my heart.
+
+Whatever happens, I loved you well, Armand, and I would have died long
+ago if I had not had the memory of your love to help me and a sort of
+vague hope of seeing you beside me again.
+
+February 4.
+
+The Comte de G. has returned. His mistress has been unfaithful to him.
+He is very sad; he was very fond of her. He came to tell me all about
+it. The poor fellow is in rather a bad way as to money; all the same, he
+has paid my bailiff and sent away the man.
+
+I talked to him about you, and he promised to tell you about me. I
+forgot that I had been his mistress, and he tried to make me forget it,
+too. He is a good friend.
+
+The duke sent yesterday to inquire after me, and this morning he came
+to see me. I do not know how the old man still keeps alive. He remained
+with me three hours and did not say twenty words. Two big tears fell
+from his eyes when he saw how pale I was. The memory of his daughter's
+death made him weep, no doubt. He will have seen her die twice. His back
+was bowed, his head bent toward the ground, his lips drooping, his eyes
+vacant. Age and sorrow weigh with a double weight on his worn-out body.
+He did not reproach me. It looked as if he rejoiced secretly to see the
+ravages that disease had made in me. He seemed proud of being still on
+his feet, while I, who am still young, was broken down by suffering.
+
+The bad weather has returned. No one comes to see me. Julie watches by
+me as much as she can. Prudence, to whom I can no longer give as much as
+I used to, begins to make excuses for not coming.
+
+Now that I am so near death, in spite of what the doctors tell me, for
+I have several, which proves that I am getting worse, I am almost sorry
+that I listened to your father; if I had known that I should only be
+taking a year of your future, I could not have resisted the longing
+to spend that year with you, and, at least, I should have died with a
+friend to hold my hand. It is true that if we had lived together this
+year, I should not have died so soon.
+
+God's will be done!
+
+February 5.
+
+Oh, come, come, Armand! I suffer horribly; I am going to die, O God!
+I was so miserable yesterday that I wanted to spend the evening, which
+seemed as if it were going to be as long as the last, anywhere but at
+home. The duke came in the morning. It seems to me as if the sight of
+this old man, whom death has forgotten, makes me die faster.
+
+Despite the burning fever which devoured me, I made them dress me and
+take me to the Vaudeville. Julie put on some rouge for me, without which
+I should have looked like a corpse. I had the box where I gave you our
+first rendezvous. All the time I had my eyes fixed on the stall where
+you sat that day, though a sort of country fellow sat there, laughing
+loudly at all the foolish things that the actors said. I was half dead
+when they brought me home. I coughed and spat blood all the night.
+To-day I can not speak, I can scarcely move my arm. My God! My God! I
+am going to die! I have been expecting it, but I can not get used to the
+thought of suffering more than I suffer now, and if--
+
+After this the few characters traced by Marguerite were indecipherable,
+and what followed was written by Julie Duprat.
+
+February 18.
+
+MONSIEUR ARMAND:
+
+Since the day that Marguerite insisted on going to the theatre she has
+got worse and worse. She has completely lost her voice, and now the use
+of her limbs.
+
+What our poor friend suffers is impossible to say. I am not used to
+emotions of this kind, and I am in a state of constant fright.
+
+How I wish you were here! She is almost always delirious; but delirious
+or lucid, it is always your name that she pronounces, when she can speak
+a word.
+
+The doctor tells me that she is not here for long. Since she got so ill
+the old duke has not returned. He told the doctor that the sight was too
+much for him.
+
+Mme. Duvernoy is not behaving well. This woman, who thought she could
+get more money out of Marguerite, at whose expense she was living almost
+completely, has contracted liabilities which she can not meet, and
+seeing that her neighbour is no longer of use to her, she does not even
+come to see her. Everybody is abandoning her. M. de G., prosecuted for
+his debts, has had to return to London. On leaving, he sent us more
+money; he has done all he could, but they have returned to seize the
+things, and the creditors are only waiting for her to die in order to
+sell everything.
+
+I wanted to use my last resources to put a stop to it, but the bailiff
+told me it was no use, and that there are other seizures to follow.
+Since she must die, it is better to let everything go than to save it
+for her family, whom she has never cared to see, and who have never
+cared for her. You can not conceive in the midst of what gilded misery
+the poor thing is dying. Yesterday we had absolutely no money. Plate,
+jewels, shawls, everything is in pawn; the rest is sold or seized.
+Marguerite is still conscious of what goes on around her, and she
+suffers in body, mind, and heart. Big tears trickle down her cheeks, so
+thin and pale that you would never recognise the face of her whom you
+loved so much, if you could see her. She has made me promise to write to
+you when she can no longer write, and I write before her. She turns her
+eyes toward me, but she no longer sees me; her eyes are already veiled
+by the coming of death; yet she smiles, and all her thoughts, all her
+soul are yours, I am sure.
+
+Every time the door opens her eyes brighten, and she thinks you are
+going to come in; then, when she sees that it is not you, her face
+resumes its sorrowful expression, a cold sweat breaks out over it, and
+her cheek-bones flush.
+
+February 19, midnight.
+
+What a sad day we have had to-day, poor M. Armand! This morning
+Marguerite was stifling; the doctor bled her, and her voice has returned
+to her a while. The doctor begged her to see a priest. She said "Yes,"
+and he went himself to fetch an abbe' from Saint Roch.
+
+Meanwhile Marguerite called me up to her bed, asked me to open a
+cupboard, and pointed out a cap and a long chemise covered with lace,
+and said in a feeble voice:
+
+"I shall die as soon as I have confessed. Then you will dress me in
+these things; it is the whim of a dying woman."
+
+Then she embraced me with tears and added:
+
+"I can speak, but I am stifled when I speak; I am stifling. Air!"
+
+I burst into tears, opened the window, and a few minutes afterward the
+priest entered. I went up to him; when he knew where he was, he seemed
+afraid of being badly received.
+
+"Come in boldly, father," I said to him.
+
+He stayed a very short time in the room, and when he came out he said to
+me:
+
+"She lived a sinner, and she will die a Christian."
+
+A few minutes afterward he returned with a choir boy bearing a crucifix,
+and a sacristan who went before them ringing the bell to announce that
+God was coming to the dying one.
+
+They went all three into the bed-room where so many strange words have
+been said, but was now a sort of holy tabernacle.
+
+I fell on my knees. I do not know how long the impression of what I saw
+will last, but I do not think that, till my turn comes, any human thing
+can make so deep an impression on me.
+
+The priest anointed with holy oil the feet and hands and forehead of the
+dying woman, repeated a short prayer, and Marguerite was ready to set
+out for the heaven to which I doubt not she will go, if God has seen the
+ordeal of her life and the sanctity of her death.
+
+Since then she has not said a word or made a movement. Twenty times I
+should have thought her dead if I had not heard her breathing painfully.
+
+February 20, 5 P.M.
+
+All is over.
+
+Marguerite fell into her last agony at about two o'clock. Never did a
+martyr suffer such torture, to judge by the cries she uttered. Two or
+three times she sat upright in the bed, as if she would hold on to her
+life, which was escaping toward God.
+
+Two or three times also she said your name; then all was silent, and she
+fell back on the bed exhausted. Silent tears flowed from her eyes, and
+she was dead.
+
+Then I went up to her; I called her, and as she did not answer I closed
+her eyes and kissed her on the forehead.
+
+Poor, dear Marguerite, I wish I were a holy woman that my kiss might
+recommend you to God.
+
+Then I dressed her as she had asked me to do. I went to find a priest at
+Saint Roch, I burned two candles for her, and I prayed in the church for
+an hour.
+
+I gave the money she left to the poor.
+
+I do not know much about religion, but I think that God will know that
+my tears were genuine, my prayers fervent, my alms-giving sincere, and
+that he will have pity on her who, dying young and beautiful, has only
+had me to close her eyes and put her in her shroud.
+
+February 22.
+
+The burial took place to-day. Many of Marguerite's friends came to the
+church. Some of them wept with sincerity. When the funeral started on
+the way to Montmartre only two men followed it: the Comte de G., who
+came from London on purpose, and the duke, who was supported by two
+footmen.
+
+I write you these details from her house, in the midst of my tears and
+under the lamp which burns sadly beside a dinner which I can not touch,
+as you can imagine, but which Nanine has got for me, for I have eaten
+nothing for twenty-four hours.
+
+My life can not retain these sad impressions for long, for my life is
+not my own any more than Marguerite's was hers; that is why I give you
+all these details on the very spot where they occurred, in the fear, if
+a long time elapsed between them and your return, that I might not be
+able to give them to you with all their melancholy exactitude.
+
+
+
+Chapter 27
+
+"You have read it?" said Armand, when I had finished the manuscript.
+
+"I understand what you must have suffered, my friend, if all that I read
+is true."
+
+"My father confirmed it in a letter."
+
+We talked for some time over the sad destiny which had been
+accomplished, and I went home to rest a little.
+
+Armand, still sad, but a little relieved by the narration of his story,
+soon recovered, and we went together to pay a visit to Prudence and to
+Julie Duprat.
+
+Prudence had become bankrupt. She told us that Marguerite was the cause
+of it; that during her illness she had lent her a lot of money in the
+form of promissory notes, which she could not pay, Marguerite having
+died without having returned her the money, and without having given her
+a receipt with which she could present herself as a creditor.
+
+By the help of this fable, which Mme. Duvernoy repeated everywhere in
+order to account for her money difficulties, she extracted a note for a
+thousand francs from Armand, who did not believe it, but who pretended
+to, out of respect for all those in whose company Marguerite had lived.
+
+Then we called on Julie Duprat, who told us the sad incident which she
+had witnessed, shedding real tears at the remembrance of her friend.
+
+Lastly, we went to Marguerite's grave, on which the first rays of the
+April sun were bringing the first leaves into bud.
+
+One duty remained to Armand--to return to his father. He wished me to
+accompany him.
+
+We arrived at C., where I saw M. Duval, such as I had imagined him from
+the portrait his son had made of him, tall, dignified, kindly.
+
+He welcomed Armand with tears of joy, and clasped my hand
+affectionately. I was not long in seeing that the paternal sentiment was
+that which dominated all others in his mind.
+
+His daughter, named Blanche, had that transparence of eyes, that
+serenity of the mouth, which indicates a soul that conceives only
+holy thoughts and lips that repeat only pious words. She welcomed her
+brother's return with smiles, not knowing, in the purity of her youth,
+that far away a courtesan had sacrificed her own happiness at the mere
+invocation of her name.
+
+I remained for some time in their happy family, full of indulgent care
+for one who brought them the convalescence of his heart.
+
+I returned to Paris, where I wrote this story just as it had been told
+me. It has only one merit, which will perhaps be denied it; that is,
+that it is true.
+
+I do not draw from this story the conclusion that all women like
+Marguerite are capable of doing all that she did--far from it; but
+I have discovered that one of them experienced a serious love in the
+course of her life, that she suffered for it, and that she died of it. I
+have told the reader all that I learned. It was my duty.
+
+I am not the apostle of vice, but I would gladly be the echo of noble
+sorrow wherever I bear its voice in prayer.
+
+The story of Marguerite is an exception, I repeat; had it not been an
+exception, it would not have been worth the trouble of writing it.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Camille (La Dame aux Camilias), by
+Alexandre Dumas, fils
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