Chapter 16
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 general 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-Elysees. 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 bill 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.
