Camille (La Dame aux Camilias)
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 _attaché_ 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 XXV
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