“Gladly; I’ll go tell my friend.”
“Go ahead.”
“Ah!” Prudence said to me the moment I prepared to leave, “and here’s the duke entering Marguerite’s box.”
I looked. A man of seventy had just sat down behind the young woman and given her a bag of candy, into which she reached, smiling. Then she went to the front of her box and made a gesture to Prudence, which could be interpreted as, “Would you like some?”
“No,” Prudence responded.
Marguerite took the bag and, turning around, began chatting with the duke.
The account of all these details sounds like childishness, but everything that had to do with that girl is so vivid in my memory that I cannot stop myself from recalling it today.
I went to alert Gaston of what I had just arranged for the two of us.
He accepted.
We left our stalls and went to Mme Duvernoy’s box.
We had just opened the door to the orchestra when we were forced to stop to let Marguerite and the duke pass by; they were leaving.
I would have given ten years of my life to change places with that old fellow.
Once they had reached the boulevard, he seated her in a phaeton that he himself drove, and they disappeared, carried off at a trot by two superb horses.
We entered Prudence’s box.
When the play was finished, we went out and hailed a simple fiacre, which drove us to the rue d’Antin, No. 7. At the door of her house, Prudence invited us to come up so she could show us her stock, which we were not familiar with, and of which she seemed to be very proud. You will guess with what alacrity I accepted.
It seemed that I was getting closer and closer to Marguerite. I soon brought the conversation back around to her.
“The old duke is at your neighbor’s place?” I asked Prudence.
“Not at all; she’s surely alone.”
“But she will be terribly bored,” said Gaston.
“We spend nearly all our evenings together, or, as soon as she comes home, she calls me. She never goes to bed before two in the morning. She can’t sleep earlier than that.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s consumptive and nearly always has a fever.”
“She doesn’t have lovers?” I asked.
“I never see anyone stay when I leave, but I can’t prove that nobody comes after I’ve gone. Often in the evening I see at her place a certain Comte de N . . . , who believes he can advance his cause by turning up at eleven o’clock and sending her as many jewels as she would like; but she wouldn’t be able to identify him in a lineup. She’s in the wrong; he’s a very rich boy. I tell her from time to time, “My dear child, this is the man you need!” Usually she listens to me well enough, but this time she turns her back on me and replies that he is too stupid. Yes, he’s stupid, I admit, but she would gain a social position, whereas this old duke could die one day to the next. Old men are selfish; his family reproaches him incessantly for his affection for Marguerite—right there are two reasons why he’ll leave her nothing. I scold her, and she retorts that there will be time enough to accept the count when the duke is dead.
“It’s not always amusing,” Prudence continued, “to live as she does. I know it wouldn’t suit me, and I would have sent that fellow packing. He’s insipid, that old man—he calls her his daughter, he takes care of her as if she were a baby, he’s always on her heels. I’m sure that at this moment one of his servants is prowling the street to see who leaves and, above all, who enters.”
“Ah, that poor Marguerite,” said Gaston, sitting down at the piano and starting to play a waltz. “I didn’t know all that. All the same I’ve found her to have less sparkle than usual for some time.”
“Shh!” said Prudence, cupping her ear.
Gaston stopped.
“She’s calling me, I think.”
We listened.
A voice was calling for Prudence.
“Go, gentlemen, off with you,” Mme Duvernoy told us.
“Ah! That’s how you show us your hospitality,” said Gaston, laughing. “We will leave when the time seems right to us.”
“Why would we leave?”
“I’m going to Marguerite’s.”
“We’ll wait here.”
“That’s not possible.”
“So then, we’ll go with you.”
“Even less possible.”
“I know Marguerite,” Gaston said. “I can certainly go visit her.”
“But Armand does not know her.”
“I will introduce him.”
“It’s impossible.”
We heard again the voice of Marguerite, still calling for Prudence.
The latter ran to her dressing room. I followed her there with Gaston. She opened the window.
We hid ourselves so as not to be seen from outside.
“I’ve been calling you for ten minutes,” Marguerite said from her window in an almost imperious tone.
“What do you want of me?”
“I want you to come over immediately.”
“Why?”
“Because the Comte de N . . . is still here, and he’s boring me to death.”
“I can’t now.”
“What’s stopping you?”
“I’ve got two young men at my place who don’t want to leave.”
“Tell them you have to go out.”
“I’ve told them.”
“Well then, let them stay at your place; when they see that you’ve gone out, they’ll leave.”
“After having turned everything upside down!”
“But what do they want?”
“They want to see you.”
“What are their names?”
“You know one of them, M. Gaston R . . . .”
“Ah yes, I know him; and the other?”
“M. Armand Duval. You don’t know him?”
“No, but bring them over anyway; I’d like anyone better than the count. I’m waiting for you; come quickly.”
Marguerite closed her window; Prudence hers.
Marguerite, who had remembered my face for a moment, did not remember my name. I would have preferred a negative memory to this oblivion.
“I knew,” Gaston said, “that she would be delighted to see us.”
“Delighted is not the word,” Prudence responded, putting on her shawl and her hat. “She is receiving you to make the count leave. Try to be more agreeable than him or, I know Marguerite; she’ll get annoyed with me.”
We followed Prudence downstairs.
I trembled; it seemed that this visit was to have a great impact on my life.
I was even more moved than I had been the night of my introduction in the box of the Opéra-Comique.
As I arrived at the door of the apartment that you know, my heart beat so furiously that all thought escaped me.
Some piano chords met our ears.
Prudence rang.
The piano fell silent.
A woman who seemed more like a companion than a housemaid came to let us in.
We walked into the living room, and from there to the boudoir, which back then looked just as it did when you saw it afterward.
A young man was leaning against the mantel. Marguerite, seated at her piano, let her fingers run over the keys, and began snippets that she did not finish.
The scene radiated ennui, provoked in the man by his embarrassment at his insignificance, in the woman by the presence of this gloomy personage.
Upon hearing Prudence’s voice, Marguerite rose, and, coming to us after having exchanged a look of gratitude with Mme Duvernoy, said to us, “Come in, gentlemen, you are welcome.”
CHAPTER IX
“Good evening, my dear Gaston,” said Marguerite to my companio
n. “I am glad to see you. Why didn’t you come visit me in my box at the Variétés?”
“I was afraid it would be indiscreet.”
“Friends”—and Marguerite emphasized this word as if she wanted to make it clear to everyone there that, despite the familiar manner in which she welcomed him, Gaston was only, and never had been anything but, a friend—“friends are never indiscreet.”
“Then permit me to introduce you to M. Armand Duval!”
“I’d already authorized Prudence to do that.”
“Apart from that, madam,” I said while nodding and managing to produce a few nearly intelligible sounds, “I have already had the honor of being introduced to you.”
Marguerite’s charming eye seemed to search her memory, but she didn’t remember at all, or seemed not to.
“Madam,” I then resumed, “I am grateful that you have forgotten our first introduction, because I was quite ridiculous and must have seemed extremely tedious to you. It was two years ago, at the Opéra-Comique; I was with Ernest de . . . .”
“Ah! I remember!” Marguerite said with a smile. “It’s not you who were ridiculous; it is I who was teasing you, as I am again now, a bit, but less, all the same. Have you forgiven me, sir?”
She extended her hand to me; I kissed it.
“It’s true,” she continued. “Imagine, I have the bad habit of wanting to embarrass people the first time I meet them. It’s very silly. My doctor says it is because I am high-strung, and always sick—believe my doctor.”
“But you seem to be quite well.”
“Oh! I’ve been very sick.”
“I know.”
“Who told you?”
“Everyone knows; I came here often to get news of you, and I learned of your recovery with pleasure.”
“Nobody ever gave me your card.”
“I never left it.”
“Are you the young man who came every day to ask about me during my illness, and who never wanted to give his name?”
“It is I.”
“Well, you are more than indulgent; you are generous. You would not have done that, count,” she added, turning toward M. de N . . . , and after having cast over me one of those looks by which women complete their assessment of a man.
“I’ve only known you for two months,” replied the count.
“And this gentleman only knew me for five minutes. You always respond with inanities.”
Women are merciless to people they don’t like.
The count reddened and bit his lip.
I felt sorry for him, because he seemed to be in love just as I was, and Marguerite’s blunt frankness must have made him quite unhappy, especially in front of two strangers.
“You were playing music when we walked in,” I said, to change the subject. “Won’t you do me the pleasure of treating me as an old friend, and keep on playing?”
“Oh!” she said, as she threw herself on the couch and gestured for us to sit there too. “Gaston knows what kind of music I play. It’s all right when I’m alone with the count, but I would not want to force you to endure such torture.”
“You reserve that preference for me?” replied M. de N . . . with a smile that he tried to make knowing and ironic.
“You are wrong to reproach me for it; it’s the only preference I show you.”
It was obvious that this poor boy would not be allowed to speak a word. He gave the young woman a truly imploring look.
“So, Prudence,” she continued, “did you do what I asked you?”
“Yes.”
“That’s good; you can tell me about it later. We have things to discuss—don’t leave before I’ve spoken with you.”
“Doubtless we are in the way,” I said. “And now that we have—or rather that I have—obtained a second introduction to cancel the memory of the first, Gaston and I will go.”
“Not at all; it is not for your benefit that I said that. On the contrary, I would like you to stay.”
The count pulled out an amazingly elegant watch, and checked the time. “It’s time for me to go to the club,” he said.
Marguerite made no response.
The count left the fireside and approached her. “Good-bye, madam.”
Marguerite rose. “Good-bye, my dear count; you’re leaving already?
“Yes, I was afraid I was boring you.”
“You didn’t bore me more today than you did any other day. When will we see you?”
“When you permit.”
“Adieu, then!”
It was cruel, you will admit.
Luckily the count had a fine upbringing and an excellent nature. He contented himself with kissing the hand that Marguerite extended nonchalantly to him, and left after bowing to us.
At the moment he crossed the threshold of the door, he looked at Prudence.
She shrugged her shoulders with an air that signified, “What do you want? I’ve done everything I could.”
“Nanine!” Marguerite cried. “Light the way for the count.”
We heard the door open and close.
“At last!” Marguerite cried, as she reappeared. “He’s gone. That boy got horribly on my nerves.”
“My dear child,” said Prudence, “you are really too unkind to him, he who is so good and so attentive to you. Here on your mantel is a watch that he has given you, and which must have cost him at least a thousand écus; I’m sure of it.”
And Mme Duvernoy, who had approached the mantelpiece, played with the trinket she was talking about, and threw covetous looks on it.
“My dear,” said Marguerite, sitting down to her piano, “when I weigh on one side what he gives to me and on the other what he says to me, I find that he gets his visits very cheaply.”
“That poor boy is in love with you.”
“If I had to listen to all the men who are in love with me, I wouldn’t have time to eat.”
And she ran her fingers over the piano, after which she turned to us and said, “Would you like anything? Me, I’d like to drink a little punch.”
“And I’d be happy to eat a spot of chicken,” said Prudence. “Shall we have supper?”
“Perfect—let’s go get some supper,” said Gaston.
“No, we will have supper here.”
She rang. Nanine appeared.
“Send out for supper.”
“What should I get?”
“Whatever you like, but right now—right now.”
Nanine left.
“Perfect,” Marguerite said, leaping like a child. “We’ll have supper. How boring that count is!”
The more I saw this woman, the more she enchanted me. She was ravishingly beautiful. Even her extreme slenderness seemed like a grace.
I was lost in thought.
What was occurring within me I would have difficulty explaining. I was full of indulgence for the life she led, full of admiration for her beauty. The proof of disinterestedness that she showed in refusing to accept a man who was young, elegant, rich, and ready to ruin himself for her excused all her past faults in my eyes.
There was something in this woman that you could call candor.
You could see she was still in the virginal stage of vice. Her assured step, her supple waist, her pink and flared nostrils, her large eyes shadowed with pale blue circles, all indicated one of those ardent natures that exhale a perfume of voluptuousness, like those flasks from the Orient from which, however tightly they are closed, let escape the fragrance of the elixir they contain.
Whether it was her nature or a consequence of her poor health, flashes of desire flickered in the eyes of this woman whose intensity would have been a heaven-sent revelation to any man who loved her. But those who had loved Marguerite could no longer be counted, and those she had loved had yet to be counted.
In short one could see in this girl both the virgin that an accident had turned courtesan, and the courtesan that an accident could have made the most loving and pure of virgins. There was pride and an independent spirit in Marguerite still—two feelings that, when injured, are capable of producing the same effect as modesty. I said nothing; my soul seemed to fill my heart and my heart to fill my eyes.
“So,” she said all at once, “you are the one who wanted news of me when I was ill.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know, that’s a beautiful thing! How can I thank you?”
“Permit me to come to see you from time to time.”
“As often as you like—from five o’clock to six; from eleven o’clock to midnight. Say, Gaston, play for me ‘L’Invitation à la Valse.’”
“Why?”
“First, to give me pleasure, and next, because I can’t seem to play it myself.”
“What prevents you?”
“The third movement, the passage with the sharps.”
Gaston rose, went to the piano, and began to play that marvelous melody by Weber, whose music was open on the stand.
Marguerite, one hand leaning on the piano, looked at the sheet music, following each note with her eyes, which she accompanied softly with her voice, and when Gaston arrived at the passage that she’d indicated, she hummed while drumming her fingers on the back of the piano, “Re, mi, re, do, re, fa, mi, re—that’s what I can’t do. Start over.”
Gaston started again, and afterward Marguerite said to him, “Now let me try.”
She took her seat and played in her own turn, but her rebel fingers always mixed up one of the notes we had just read.
“It’s incredible,” she said, in a truly childish intonation, “that I can’t play this passage right! Can you believe that I sometimes stay up practicing it until two in the morning! And when I think that that imbecile count can play it by heart and play it well, that’s what makes me furious with him, I believe.”
And she started over, always with the same result.
“The devil take Weber, music, and all pianos!” she said, flinging the music across the room. “Doesn’t he understand I can’t play eight sharps in a row?”
And she crossed her arms while looking at us and tapping her foot.
The Lady of the Camellias Page 8