Chapter 2
The sale was to take place on the 16th. A day's interval had been
left between the visiting days and the sale, in order to give
time for taking down the hangings, curtains, etc. I had just
returned from abroad. It was natural that I had not heard of
Marguerite's death among the pieces of news which one's friends
always tell on returning after an absence. Marguerite was a
pretty woman; but though the life of such women makes sensation
enough, their death makes very little. They are suns which set as
they rose, unobserved. Their death, when they die young, is heard
of by all their lovers at the same moment, for in Paris almost
all the lovers of a well-known woman are friends. A few
recollections are exchanged, and everybody's life goes on as if
the incident had never occurred, without so much as a tear.
Nowadays, at twenty-five, tears have become so rare a thing that
they are not to be squandered indiscriminately. It is the most
that can be expected if the parents who pay for being wept over
are wept over in return for the price they pay.
As for me, though my initials did not occur on any of
Marguerite's belongings, that instinctive indulgence, that
natural pity that I have already confessed, set me thinking over
her death, more perhaps than it was worth thinking over. I
remembered having often met Marguerite in the Bois, where she
went regularly every day in a little blue coupe drawn by two
magnificent bays, and I had noticed in her a distinction quite
apart from other women of her kind, a distinction which was
enhanced by a really exceptional beauty.
These unfortunate creatures whenever they go out are always
accompanied by somebody or other. As no man cares to make himself
conspicuous by being seen in their company, and as they are
afraid of solitude, they take with them either those who are not
well enough off to have a carriage, or one or another of those
elegant, ancient ladies, whose elegance is a little inexplicable,
and to whom one can always go for information in regard to the
women whom they accompany.
In Marguerite's case it was quite different. She was always alone
when she drove in the Champs-Elysees, lying back in her carriage
as much as possible, dressed in furs in winter, and in summer
wearing very simple dresses; and though she often passed people
whom she knew, her smile, when she chose to smile, was seen only
by them, and a duchess might have smiled in just such a manner.
She did not drive to and fro like the others, from the Rond-Point
to the end of the Champs-Elysees. She drove straight to the Bois.
There she left her carriage, walked for an hour, returned to her
carriage, and drove rapidly home.
All these circumstances which I had so often witnessed came back
to my memory, and I regretted her death as one might regret the
destruction of a beautiful work of art.
It was impossible to see more charm in beauty than in that of
Marguerite. Excessively tall and thin, she had in the fullest
degree the art of repairing this oversight of Nature by the mere
arrangement of the things she wore. Her cashmere reached to the
ground, and showed on each side the large flounces of a silk
dress, and the heavy muff which she held pressed against her
bosom was surrounded by such cunningly arranged folds that the
eye, however exacting, could find no fault with the contour of
the lines. Her head, a marvel, was the object of the most
coquettish care. It was small, and her mother, as Musset would
say, seemed to have made it so in order to make it with care.
Set, in an oval of indescribable grace, two black eyes,
surmounted by eyebrows of so pure a curve that it seemed as if
painted; veil these eyes with lovely lashes, which, when drooped,
cast their shadow on the rosy hue of the cheeks; trace a
delicate, straight nose, the nostrils a little open, in an ardent
aspiration toward the life of the senses; design a regular mouth,
with lips parted graciously over teeth as white as milk; colour
the skin with the down of a peach that no hand has touched, and
you will have the general aspect of that charming countenance.
The hair, black as jet, waving naturally or not, was parted on
the forehead in two large folds and draped back over the head,
leaving in sight just the tip of the ears, in which there
glittered two diamonds, worth four to five thousand francs each.
How it was that her ardent life had left on Marguerite's face the
virginal, almost childlike expression, which characterized it, is
a problem which we can but state, without attempting to solve it.
Marguerite had a marvellous portrait of herself, by Vidal, the
only man whose pencil could do her justice. I had this portrait
by me for a few days after her death, and the likeness was so
astonishing that it has helped to refresh my memory in regard to
some points which I might not otherwise have remembered.
Some among the details of this chapter did not reach me until
later, but I write them here so as not to be obliged to return to
them when the story itself has begun.
Marguerite was always present at every first night, and passed
every evening either at the theatre or the ball. Whenever there
was a new piece she was certain to be seen, and she invariably
had three things with her on the ledge of her ground-floor box:
her opera-glass, a bag of sweets, and a bouquet of camellias.
For twenty-five days of the month the camellias were white, and
for five they were red; no one ever knew the reason of this
change of colour, which I mention though I can not explain it; it
was noticed both by her friends and by the habitue's of the
theatres to which she most often went. She was never seen with
any flowers but camellias. At the florist's, Madame Barjon's, she
had come to be called "the Lady of the Camellias," and the name
stuck to her.
Like all those who move in a certain set in Paris, I knew that
Marguerite had lived with some of the most fashionable young men
in society, that she spoke of it openly, and that they themselves
boasted of it; so that all seemed equally pleased with one
another. Nevertheless, for about three years, after a visit to
Bagnees, she was said to be living with an old duke, a foreigner,
enormously rich, who had tried to remove her as far as possible
from her former life, and, as it seemed, entirely to her own
satisfaction.
This is what I was told on the subject. In the spring of 1847
Marguerite was so ill that the doctors ordered her to take the
waters, and she went to Bagneres. Among the invalids was the
daughter of this duke; she was not only suffering from the same
complaint, but she was so like Marguerite in appearance that they
might have been taken for sisters; the young duchess was in the
last stage of consumption, and a few days after Marguerite's
arrival she died. One morning, the duke, who had remained at
Bagneres to be near the soil that had buried a part of his heart,
caught sight of Marguerite at a turn of the road. He seemed to
see the shadow of his child, and going up to her, he took her
hands, embraced and wept over her, and without even asking her
who she was, begged her to let him love in her the living image
of his dead child. Marguerite, alone at Bagneres with her maid,
and not being in any fear of compromising herself, granted the
duke's request. Some people who knew her, happening to be at
Bagneres, took upon themselves to explain Mademoiselle Gautier's
true position to the duke. It was a blow to the old man, for the
resemblance with his daughter was ended in one direction, but it
was too late. She had become a necessity to his heart, his only
pretext, his only excuse, for living. He made no reproaches, he
had indeed no right to do so, but he asked her if she felt
herself capable of changing her mode of life, offering her in
return for the sacrifice every compensation that she could
desire. She consented.
It must be said that Marguerite was just then very ill. The past
seemed to her sensitive nature as if it were one of the main
causes of her illness, and a sort of superstition led her to hope
that God would restore to her both health and beauty in return
for her repentance and conversion. By the end of the summer, the
waters, sleep, the natural fatigue of long walks, had indeed more
or less restored her health. The duke accompanied her to Paris,
where he continued to see her as he had done at Bagneres.
This liaison, whose motive and origin were quite unknown, caused
a great sensation, for the duke, already known for his immense
fortune, now became known for his prodigality. All this was set
down to the debauchery of a rich old man, and everything was
believed except the truth. The father's sentiment for Marguerite
had, in truth, so pure a cause that anything but a communion of
hearts would have seemed to him a kind of incest, and he had
never spoken to her a word which his daughter might not have
heard.
Far be it from me to make out our heroine to be anything but what
she was. As long as she remained at Bagneres, the promise she had
made to the duke had not been hard to keep, and she had kept it;
but, once back in Paris, it seemed to her, accustomed to a life
of dissipation, of balls, of orgies, as if the solitude, only
interrupted by the duke's stated visits, would kill her with
boredom, and the hot breath of her old life came back across her
head and heart.
We must add that Marguerite had returned more beautiful than she
had ever been; she was but twenty, and her malady, sleeping but
not subdued, continued to give her those feverish desires which
are almost always the result of diseases of the chest.
It was a great grief to the duke when his friends, always on the
lookout for some scandal on the part of the woman with whom, it
seemed to them, he was compromising himself, came to tell him,
indeed to prove to him, that at times when she was sure of not
seeing him she received other visits, and that these visits were
often prolonged till the following day. On being questioned,
Marguerite admitted everything to the duke, and advised him,
without arriere-pensee, to concern himself with her no longer,
for she felt incapable of carrying out what she had undertaken,
and she did not wish to go on accepting benefits from a man whom
she was deceiving. The duke did not return for a week; it was all
he could do, and on the eighth day he came to beg Marguerite to
let him still visit her, promising that he would take her as she
was, so long as he might see her, and swearing that he would
never utter a reproach against her, not though he were to die of
it.
This, then, was the state of things three months after
Marguerite's return; that is to say, in November or December,
1842.
