Camille (La Dame aux Camilias)
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 XXIV
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