Camille

by Alexandre Dumas fils

God had been merciful to the poor child, in not having left her to pay the ordinary penalty, but rather to die in the midst of her beauty and luxury, before the coming of old age, the courtesan’s first death.

Is there anything sadder in the world than the old age of vice, especially in woman? She preserves no dignity, she inspires no interest. The everlasting repentance, not of the evil ways followed, but of the plans that have miscarried, the money that has been spent in vain, is as saddening a thing as one can well meet with.

“Poor girl!” I said to myself as I returned home; “she must have had a sad death, for, in her world, one has friends only when one is perfectly well.” And in spite of myself I began to feel melancholy over the fate of Marguerite Gautier. It will seem absurd to many people, but I have an unbounded sympathy for women of this kind, and I do not think it necessary to apologize for such sympathy.

For twenty-five days of the month the camellias were white, and for five they were red;

Manon died in the desert, it is true, but in the arms of the man who loved her with the whole energy of his soul; who, when she was dead, dug a grave for her, and watered it with his tears, and buried his heart on it; while Marguerite, a sinner like Manon, and perhaps converted like her, had died in a sumptuous bed (it seemed, after what I had seen, the bed of her past), but in that desert of the heart, a more barren, a vaster, a more pitiless desert than that in which Manon had found her last resting-place. Marguerite in fact, as I had found from some friends who knew of the last circumstances of her life, had not a single real friend by her bedside during the two months of her long and painful agony.

For the woman whose education has not taught her what is right, God almost always opens two ways which lead thither, the ways of sorrow and of love.

Why do we make ourselves more strict than Christ? Why, holding obstinately to the opinions of the world, which hardens itself in order that it may be thought strong, do we reject, as it rejects, souls bleeding at wounds by which, like a sick man’s bad blood, the evil of their past may be healed, if only a friendly hand is stretched out to lave them and set them in the convalescence of the heart?

“People would think it childish enough if they saw me lament like this over a dead woman such as she; no one will ever know what I made that woman suffer, how cruel I have been to her! how good, how resigned she was! I thought it was I who had to forgive her, and to-day I feel unworthy of the forgiveness which she grants me. Oh, I would give ten years of my life to weep at her feet for an hour!”

I do not know if you have noticed, if once the name of anybody who might in the natural course of things have always remained unknown, or at all events indifferent to you, should be mentioned before you, immediately details begin to group themselves about the name, and you find all your friends talking to you about something which they have never mentioned to you before. You discover that this person was almost touching you and has passed close to you many times in your life without your noticing it; you find coincidences in the events which are told you, a real affinity with certain events of your own existence.

“They always say she was very much in love with him, but as girls like that are in love. It is no good to ask them for what they can not give.”

She is the dead body that I like the best. You see, sir, we are obliged to love the dead, for we are kept so busy, we have hardly time to love anything else.”

“Well, I am pretty sure he is not back yet, or he would have been here already.” “You don’t think he has forgotten Marguerite?” “I am not only sure he hasn‘t, but I would wager that he wants to change her grave simply in order to have one more look at her.”

“It is my only chance of getting better. I must see her. Ever since I heard of her death, especially since I saw her grave, I have not been able to sleep. I can not realize that this woman, so young and so beautiful when I left her, is really dead. I must convince myself of it. I must see what God has done with a being that I have loved so much, and perhaps the horror of the sight will cure me of my despair.

I was afraid that she would accept me too promptly and give me at once what I would fain have purchased by long waiting or some great sacrifice. We men are built like that; and it is very fortunate that the imagination lends so much poetry to the senses, and that the desires of the body make thus much concession to the dreams of the soul. If any one had said to me, You shall have this woman to-night and be killed to-morrow, I would have accepted. If any one had said to me, You can be her lover for ten pounds, I would have refused.

However little one may have known women like Marguerite, one can not but know the delight they take in pretending to be witty and in teasing the people whom they meet for the first time. It is no doubt a return for the humiliations which they often have to submit to on the part of those whom they see every day.

I had completely lost sight of Marguerite, and, as I told you, when she passed me in the corridor of the Variétés, I did not recognise her. She was veiled, it is true; but, veiled though she might have been two years earlier, I should not have needed to see her in order to recognise her: I should have known her intuitively. All the same, my heart began to beat when I knew that it was she; and the two years that had passed since I saw her, and what had seemed to be the results of that separation, vanished in smoke at the mere touch of her dress.

How many ways does the heart take, how many reasons does it invent for itself, in order to arrive at what it wants!

Women are pitiless toward those whom they do not care for.

“You are mad,” replied Marguerite. “You know quite well that I don’t want you. It is no good at the end of two years to make love to a woman like me. With us, it is at once, or never.

“If I took care of myself I should die. All that supports me is the feverish life I lead. Then, as for taking care of oneself, that is all very well for women with families and friends; as for us, from the moment we can no longer serve the vanity or the pleasure of our lovers, they leave us, and long nights follow long days. I know it. I was in bed for two months, and after three weeks no one came to see me.”

“You think like that to-night because the wine has made you sad, but you would never have the patience that you pretend to.” “Permit me to say, Marguerite, that you were ill for two months, and that for two months I came to ask after you every day.” “It is true, but why did you not come up?” “Because I did not know you then.” “Need you have been so particular with a girl like me?” “One must always be particular with a woman; it is what I feel, at least.” “So you would look after me?” “Yes.” “You would stay by me all day?” “Yes.” “And even all night?” “As long as I did not weary you.” “And what do you call that?” “Devotion.” “And what does this devotion come from?” “The irresistible sympathy which I have for you.” “So you are in love with me? Say it straight out, it is much more simple.” “It is possible; but if I am to say it to you one day, it is not to-day.” “You will do better never to say it.” “Why?” “Because only one of two things can come of it.” “What?” “Either I shall not accept: then you will have a grudge against me; or I shall accept: then you will have a sorry mistress; a woman who is nervous, ill, sad, or gay with a gaiety sadder then grief, a woman who spits blood and spends a hundred thousand francs a year. That is all very well for a rich old man like the duke, but it is very bad for a young man like you, and the proof of it is that all the young lovers I have had have very soon left me.”

Men, instead of being satisfied in obtaining for a long time what they scarcely hoped to obtain once, exact from their mistresses a full account of the present, the past, and even the future. As they get accustomed to her, they want to rule her, and the more one gives them the more exacting they become. If I decide now on taking a new lover, he must have three very rare qualities: he must be confiding, submissive, and discreet.”

“It must seem strange to you that I am ready to take you at a moment’s notice. Shall I tell you why? It is,” she continued, taking my hand and placing it against her heart so that I could feel how rapidly and violently it palpitated; “it is because I shall not live as long as others, and I have promised myself to live more quickly.” “Don’t speak to me like that, I entreat you.” “Oh, make yourself easy,” she continued, laughing; “however short a time I have to live, I shall live longer than you will love me!”

To be loved by a pure young girl, to be the first to reveal to her the strange mystery of love, is indeed a great happiness, but it is the simplest thing in the world. To take captive a heart which has had no experience of attack, is to enter an unfortified and ungarrisoned city. Education, family feeling, the sense of duty, the family, are strong sentinels, but there are no sentinels so vigilant as not to be deceived by a girl of sixteen to whom nature, by the voice of the man she loves, gives the first counsels of love, all the more ardent because they seem so pure.

But to be really loved by a courtesan: that is a victory of infinitely greater difficulty. With them the body has worn out the soul, the senses have burned up the heart, dissipation has blunted the feelings. They have long known the words that we say to them, the means we use; they have sold the love that they inspire. They love by profession, and not by instinct. They are guarded better by their calculations than a virgin by her mother and her convent; and they have invented the word caprice for that unbartered love which they allow themselves from time to time, for a rest, for an excuse, for a consolation, like usurers, who cheat a thousand, and think they have bought their own redemption by once lending a sovereign to a poor devil who is dying of hunger without asking for interest or a receipt.

One day a young man is passing in the street, he brushes against a woman, looks at her, turns, goes on his way. He does not know the woman, and she has pleasures, griefs, loves, in which he has no part. He does not exist for her, and perhaps, if he spoke to her, she would only laugh at him, as Marguerite had laughed at me. Weeks, months, years pass, and all at once, when they have each followed their fate along a different path, the logic of chance brings them face to face. The woman becomes the man’s mistress and loves him. How? why? Their two existences are henceforth one; they have scarcely begun to know one another when it seems as if they had known one another always, and all that had gone before is wiped out from the memory of the two lovers. It is curious, one must admit.

I am a poor country girl, and six years ago I could not write my own name. You are relieved, aren’t you? Why is it you are the first whom I have ever asked to share the joy of this desire of mine? I suppose because I feel that you love me for myself and not for yourself, while all the others have only loved me for themselves.

“Well, my friend, you must either love me a little less or understand me a little better.

We are sometimes obliged to buy the satisfaction of our souls at the expense of our bodies, and we suffer still more, when afterward, that satisfaction is denied us.”

When I thought that this marvellous creature, whose feet I had once longed to kiss, was willing to let me take my place in her thoughts, my part in her life, and that I was not yet content with what she gave me, I asked if man’s desire has indeed limits when, satisfied as promptly as mine had been, it reached after something further.

If men knew what they can have for a tear, they would be better loved and we should be less ruinous to them.

“We no longer belong to ourselves. We are no longer beings, but things. We stand first in their self-esteem, last in their esteem.

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.

“women like Marguerite always foresee that some one will love them, never that they will love;

Love always makes a man better, no matter what woman inspires it.

How sweet it is to let oneself be persuaded by the voice that one loves!

At last I left the room, where every object had assumed that melancholy aspect which the restless solitude of the heart gives to all its surroundings.

When one’s existence has contracted a habit, such as that of this love, it seems impossible that the habit should be broken without at the same time breaking all the other springs of life.

I had loved, I still loved this woman so much that I could not suddenly become indifferent to her. I had to love or to hate her. Above all, whatever I felt for her, I had to see her again, and at once. This desire possessed my mind, and with all the violence of a will which had begun to reassert itself in a body so long inert.

Oh, how petty and vile is man when he is wounded in one of his narrow passions!

Only men are strong enough not to forgive.

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!

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.

His daughter, named Blanche, had that tran sparence of eyes, that serenity of the mouth, which indicates a soul that conceives only holy thoughts and lips that repeat only pious words. She welcomed her brother’s return with smiles, not knowing, in the purity of her youth, that far away a courtesan had sacrificed her own happiness at the mere invocation of her name.