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 towhatever Marguerite wished, Marguerite to be unable to live apart fromme.
It was the day after the evening when she came to see me that I sent herManon Lescaut.
From that time, seeing that I could not change my mistress's life, Ichanged my own. I wished above all not to leave myself time to thinkover the position I had accepted, for, in spite of myself, it was agreat distress to me. Thus my life, generally so calm, assumed allat once an appearance of noise and disorder. Never believe, howeverdisinterested the love of a kept woman may be, that it will cost onenothing. Nothing is so expensive as their caprices, flowers, boxes atthe theatre, suppers, days in the country, which one can never refuse toone'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 inorder to attain this position.
It is worth forty thousand francs a year, and during the ten years thathe has had it, he has paid off the security and put aside a dowry formy sister. My father is the most honourable man in the world. Whenmy mother died, she left six thousand francs a year, which he dividedbetween my sister and myself on the very day when he received hisappointment; then, when I was twenty-one, he added to this little incomean annual allowance of five thousand francs, assuring me that witheight thousand francs a year I might live very happily at Paris, if, inaddition to this, I would make a position for myself either in law ormedicine. I came to Paris, studied law, was called to the bar, and, likemany 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 ineight months, and spent the four summer months with my father, whichpractically gave me twelve thousand francs a year, and, in addition, thereputation 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 soonincreased. Marguerite's nature was very capricious, and, like so manywomen, she never regarded as a serious expense those thousand and onedistractions which made up her life. So, wishing to spend as much timewith me as possible, she would write to me in the morning that she woulddine with me, not at home, but at some restaurant in Paris or in thecountry. I would call for her, and we would dine and go on to thetheatre, often having supper as well; and by the end of the evening Ihad spent four or five louis, which came to two or three thousand francsa month, which reduced my year to three months and a half, and made itnecessary for me either to go into debt or to leave Marguerite. I wouldhave consented to anything except the latter.
Forgive me if I give you all these details, but you will see that theywere the cause of what was to follow. What I tell you is a true andsimple story, and I leave to it all the naivete of its details and allthe simplicity of its developments.
I realized then that as nothing in the world would make me forget mymistress, it was needful for me to find some way of meeting the expensesinto which she drew me. Then, too, my love for her had so disturbingan influence upon me that every moment I spent away from Marguerite waslike a year, and that I felt the need of consuming these moments in thefire of some sort of passion, and of living them so swiftly as not toknow 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 destroyedgambling goes on everywhere. Formerly, when one went to Frascati, onehad the chance of making a fortune; one played against money, and ifone lost, there was always the consolation of saying that one might havegained; whereas now, except in the clubs, where there is still a certainrigour in regard to payments, one is almost certain, the moment onegains a considerable sum, not to receive it. You will readily understandwhy. Gambling is only likely to be carried on by young people very muchin need of money and not possessing the fortune necessary for supportingthe life they lead; they gamble, then, and with this result; or elsethey gain, and then those who lose serve to pay for their horsesand mistresses, which is very disagreeable. Debts are contracted,acquaintances begun about a green table end by quarrels in which lifeor honour comes to grief; and though one may be an honest man, one findsoneself ruined by very honest men, whose only defect is that they havenot two hundred thousand francs a year.
I need not tell you of those who cheat at play, and of how one hears onefine day of their hasty disappearance and tardy condemnation.
I flung myself into this rapid, noisy, and volcanic life, which hadformerly terrified me when I thought of it, and which had become forme the necessary complement of my love for Marguerite. What else could Ihave done?
The nights that I did not spend in the Rue d'Antin, if I had spent themalone in my own room, I could not have slept. Jealousy would have keptme awake, and inflamed my blood and my thoughts; while gambling gave anew 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 thisI knew the violence of my love, I left the table without a moment'shesitation, whether I was winning or losing, pitying those whom I leftbehind because they would not, like me, find their real happiness inleaving it. For the most of them, gambling was a necessity; for me, itwas a remedy. Free of Marguerite, I should have been free of gambling.
Thus, in the midst of all that, I preserved a considerable amount ofself-possession I lost only what I was able to pay, and gained onlywhat I should have been able to lose.
For the rest, chance was on my side. I made no debts, and I spent threetimes as much money as when I did not gamble. It was impossible toresist an existence which gave me an easy means of satisfying thethousand caprices of Marguerite. As for her, she continued to love me asmuch, or even more than ever.
As I told you, I began by being allowed to stay only from midnight tosix o'clock, then I was asked sometimes to a box in the theatre, thenshe 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 cameabout in Marguerite. I had taken her cure in hand, and the poorgirl, seeing my aim, obeyed me in order to prove her gratitude. I hadsucceeded without effort or trouble in almost isolating her from herformer habits. My doctor, whom I had made her meet, had told me thatonly rest and calm could preserve her health, so that in place of supperand sleepless nights, I succeeded in substituting a hygienic regime andregular sleep. In spite of herself, Marguerite got accustomed to thisnew existence, whose salutary effects she already realized. She beganto spend some of her evenings at home, or, if the weather was fine, shewrapped herself in a shawl, put on a veil, and we went on foot, liketwo children, in the dim alleys of the Champs-Elysees. She would comein tired, take a light supper, and go to bed after a little music orreading, which she had never been used to do. The cough, whichevery time that I heard it seemed to go through my chest, had almostcompletely disappeared.
At the end of six weeks the count was entirely given up, and only theduke obliged me to conceal my liaison with Marguerite, and even he wassent away when I was there, under the pretext that she was asleep andhad given orders that she was not to be awakened.
The habit or the need of seeing me which Marguerite had now contractedhad this good result: that it forced me to leave the gaming-table justat the moment when an adroit gambler would have left it. Settling onething against another, I found myself in possession of some ten thousandfrancs, which seemed to me an inexhaustible capital.
The time of the year when I was accustomed to join my father and sisterhad 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, alwaysrepea
ting that I was quite well and that I was not in need of money, twothings which, I thought, would console my father for my delay in payinghim my annual visit.
Just then, one fine day in summer, Marguerite was awakened by thesunlight pouring into her room, and, jumping out of bed, asked me if Iwould take her into the country for the whole day.
We sent for Prudence, and all three set off, after Marguerite had givenNanine orders to tell the duke that she had taken advantage of the fineday to go into the country with Mme. Duvernoy.
Besides the presence of Mme. Duvernoy being needful on account of theold duke, Prudence was one of those women who seem made on purpose fordays in the country. With her unchanging good-humour and her eternalappetite, she never left a dull moment to those whom she was with, andwas perfectly happy in ordering eggs, cherries, milk, stewed rabbit, andall the rest of the traditional lunch in the country.
We had now only to decide where we should go. It was once more Prudencewho 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 gardenon Sundays. There is a magnificent view from the garden, which is atthe height of an ordinary first floor. On the left the Aqueduct of Marlycloses in the horizon, on the right one looks across bill after hill;the river, almost without current at that spot, unrolls itself like alarge white watered ribbon between the plain of the Gabillons and theisland of Croissy, lulled eternally by the trembling of its high poplarsand the murmur of its willows. Beyond, distinct in the sunlight, riselittle white houses, with red roofs, and manufactories, which, at thatdistance, put an admirable finish to the landscape. Beyond that, Parisin the mist! As Prudence had told us, it was the real country, and, Imust add, it was a real lunch.
It is not only out of gratitude for the happiness I owe it, butBougival, in spite of its horrible name, is one of the prettiest placesthat it is possible to imagine. I have travelled a good deal, and seenmuch grander things, but none more charming than this little villagegaily seated at the foot of the hill which protects it.
Mme. Arnould asked us if we would take a boat, and Marguerite andPrudence accepted joyously.
People have always associated the country with love, and they have donewell; nothing affords so fine a frame for the woman whom one loves asthe blue sky, the odours, the flowers, the breeze, the shining solitudeof fields, or woods. However much one loves a woman, whatever confidenceone may have in her, whatever certainty her past may offer us as to herfuture, 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 inwhom you would live wholly. It seems as if, however indifferent she maybe to her surroundings, the woman whom one loves loses something of herperfume and of her unity at the contact of men and things. As for me, Iexperienced that more than most. Mine was not an ordinary love; I wasas much in love as an ordinary creature could be, but with MargueriteGautier; that is to say, that at Paris, at every step, I might elbowthe man who had already been her lover or who was about to, while inthe country, surrounded by people whom we had never seen and who had noconcern with us, alone with nature in the spring-time of the year, thatannual pardon, and shut off from the noise of the city, I could hide mylove, and love without shame or fear.
The courtesan disappeared little by little. I had by me a young andbeautiful woman, whom I loved, and who loved me, and who was calledMarguerite; 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 purestbride. We walked together in those charming spots which seemed to havebeen made on purpose to recall the verses of Lamartine or to sing themelodies of Scudo. Marguerite was dressed in white, she leaned on myarm, saying over to me again under the starry sky the words she had saidto me the day before, and far off the world went on its way, withoutdarkening 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 theleaves of the trees, as, lying on the grass of the island on which wehad landed, I let my thought wander, free from the human links that hadbound 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 shorea charming little house of two stories, with a semicircular railing;through the railing, in front of the house, a green lawn, smooth asvelvet, and behind the house a little wood full of mysterious retreats,where the moss must efface each morning the pathway that had beenmade the day before. Climbing flowers clung about the doorway of thisuninhabited house, mounting as high as the first story.
I looked at the house so long that I began by thinking of it as mine, soperfectly did it embody the dream that I was dreaming; I saw Margueriteand myself there, by day in the little wood that covered the hillside,in the evening seated on the grass, and I asked myself if earthlycreatures had ever been so happy as we should be.
"What a pretty house!" Marguerite said to me, as she followed thedirection 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'llsee about it if you like."
Marguerite looked at me, as if to ask me what I thought. My dreamvanished at the last words of Prudence, and brought me back to realityso brutally that I was still stunned with the fall.
"Yes, yes, an excellent idea," I stammered, not knowing what I wassaying.
"Well, I will arrange that," said Marguerite, freeing my hand, andinterpreting my words according to her own desire. "Let us go and see ifit 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. Youknow 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 comeand spend them with you."
We left the house, and started on our return to Paris, talking overthe new plan. I held Marguerite in my arms, and as I got down from thecarriage, I had already begun to look upon her arrangement with lesscritical eyes.
La dame aux camélias (Novel). English Page 16