Camille — 16 - Chapter 16

Chapter XVI

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 général_ 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-Elysées.

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 hill 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 XVII

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 fête_, 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 _tête-à-tête_ 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 XVIII

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.