Camille (La Dame aux Camilias)
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 XIII
“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.”