Chapter 17
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 fete, 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
tete-a-tete 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.
