Camille — 25 - Chapter 25

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 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 hate 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 XXVI

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-Elysées, 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 fêtes 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-Elysées 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.