Before she fell ill, Marie’s religious feelings had been vague and sentimental—a mix, Vienne says, of spiritualism and mysticism with sudden fears and superstitions. Mme Judith thought it no coincidence that Marie’s apartment almost directly faced the church of La Madeleine, as if she wanted to be protected by the saint who had traded on her beauty before giving herself to God. Did Marie take comfort from Marochetti’s High Altar, a marble figure of Mary Magdalene borne heavenward by three powerful angels? Vienne noted how she had developed a strange attraction to her patron saint and was attending mass at La Madeleine more and more frequently. She had recently bought a tapestry-covered prie-dieu, and her rosary was said to have been blessed by Pope Leo XII. Arriving at boulevard de la Madeleine on one of his visits that winter, Romain was warned by Clotilde to be quiet, and through Marie’s open bedroom door he saw that she was kneeling on her prie-dieu. When she came into the salon some minutes later to greet him, she thanked him for not interrupting her. “When I pray I find a real sense of relief.”
Vienne says that for several months after her marriage, Marie took on no new protector, turning down all propositions out of gratitude for what Ned had done for her. Her debts, amounting to nearly thirty thousand francs, bear this out: 1,449 francs owed for linen, 250 to her vet, 225 for unpaid laundry bills … and she made nineteen transactions at the Mont-de-Piété to pawn jewels and other valuables in return for cash. In April she was sued by her lingerie merchant and could not pay the rent of her stable, yet she gave no outward sign of any change in her circumstances. In the early afternoon of April 25, her carriage was spotted among a procession on the boulevard des Invalides, the starting point for demimondaines, aristocrats, and ordinary Parisians in a crush of cabs, chariots, phaetons, and landaus en route to Croix de Berny races. “I can see her now,” writes Charles du Hays, “pale and distressed, all dressed in white, in her faded green landau borne along at full trot by four splendid white horses.” Marie’s main reason for being there was to watch the steeplechase of gentleman riders performing feats of horsemanship over hedges and ditches in the great meadow. One of the two chosen to represent France, displaying more courage than good fortune, was a mud-spattered Ned Perregaux.
By May 1846 she had taken on a wealthy new lover—eighteen-year-old Count Olympe Aguado de las Marismas, whose father, the late marquis, had left a legacy estimated at between 35 million and 65 million francs. The first nineteenth-century banker to acquire a Bordeaux château, Château Margaux, the Marquis de las Marismas also owned an immense and important art collection and was close both to the imperial court and to renowned artists and musicians of his era. (Rossini composed a cantata for Olympe’s baptism.) Wanting to link the two great Spanish families of Aguado and Montijo, he had ambitions for Olympe to marry Eugénie, later empress consort of France, but he died in 1842, when his son was still an adolescent. Having inherited his father’s passion for art as well as his fortune, Olympe studied drawing at Henry IV College before entering le beau monde, becoming an habitué of the foyer de la danse and a member of the Jockey Club. With his theatrical black beard, hair combed forward, and hefty build, he was not especially good-looking but was highly sought after by women. “Thanks to his opulence, he had a number of mistresses on the go, without counting those in reserve,” says Vienne, who disguises the young count as Gaston de Morenas and evidently approved of his easygoing character and kind heart. Olympe had made clear to Marie from the start, Vienne maintains, that he did not want a long, complicated relationship, but, at the same time, he realized that she was too special to be just a passing fling. Olympe was loyal, sweet-natured, and generous, and Marie had complete confidence in him, acquiescing to demands she would refuse any other lover.
To illustrate this, Vienne presents a scene in which the dialogue is invented, as he was not there, but the story itself is convincing and could have been passed on to him by Marie or Olympe. A group of women in a sumptuous drawing room are discussing the lovely young girl they have often seen in her box at the theater. Propriety forbids them to invite her to their salon, and they cannot visit hers. “I wish I could talk to her incognito,” says one, “so that I could see for myself whether she deserves the praise lavished on her by men.” Aware that Marie Duplessis is “not unknown” to Olympe, they ask him to think up a pretext for them to meet her. Her work for charity might be the answer, he says, as she had always been discreetly generous to the needy—especially to girls of ill repute. The women each pledge between five hundred and one thousand francs, and Olympe makes them promise that if he brings the courtesan to see them, they will ask no personal questions. He then pays a visit to Marie, telling her that he has organized a collection for orphaned girls, and asks for her cooperation. She immediately reaches for her purse, but Olympe says that he needs more from her than a donation: he wants her to take on the role of patroness and collect funds from the women of the grands faubourgs herself. Marie is shocked—“I’ll be chased away by their valets”—but Olympe vows to be her escort, reassuring her that any injurious remarks would have to be made in his presence. “Anyone else would have failed in this proposal,” writes Vienne, “but [Olympe] occupied an exceptional place in Marie’s esteem.”
On the day of the rendezvous, everyone present was in on the secret. Marie was pale and trembling as she entered the room but gained confidence from the murmur of approval that greeted her arrival. She had dressed with simple, almost severe elegance, and as the women chatted to her on all manner of subjects, they were struck by her dignity, tact, and eloquence. “She’s enchanting,” the hostess whispered to Olympe, remarking how unfortunate it was that a woman so distinguished should be lost to society. She was, indeed, a fine girl, he replied, and it was through no fault of her own that she had been thrown into a life of vice. “You must pity her and not condemn her.” When Marie took around the collection box, only one woman was frosty toward her. Vienne calls her the Countess de la Brosse, but she is very likely to have been Valentine Delessert, whose eighteen-year-old son, Edouard, was one of Olympe’s closest friends. Wife of Gabriel Delessert, the prefect of police, she was hardly a model of convention herself, being mistress for ten years of Prosper Mérimée, the author of Carmen. But what either irked or embarrassed her was that she knew her own son was infatuated with Marie. A protégé of Mérimée, who helped him with his first attempts at writing, Edouard Delessert was a painter, archaeologist, and soon to be (along with Olympe) one of France’s first photographers. “A delicious young man,” wrote an acquaintance, “of a grand culture and chivalrous heart … he had read everything, seen everything, knew everything.” Marie would undoubtedly have enjoyed Edouard’s company, but she asked Olympe to discourage him from pursuing her. She could not face another young man’s declaration of undying passion, she told him, but her real reason, according to Vienne, was the respect she felt for Edouard’s mother. Because Mme Delessert had been gracious enough to receive her, she felt it would be tasteless to accept the attentions of her son.
It was Olympe who introduced Marie to Aguado’s personal physician, Casimir Davaine. A precursor of Louis Pasteur in discovering the role of microbes in infectious diseases, Davaine would like to have concentrated on scientific research but was too generous with the time he devoted to his patients. (He was with the Aguados in Spain when the marquis collapsed during a meal and never recovered.) A nature lover, he believed that health is the principal element of happiness, and he suggested to Marie that she should to go for a rest cure to the countryside. Heeding his advice, she went back to Normandy, staying with her great-uncle Louis Mesnil, now a widower, in La Trouillère. Living nearby with her new husband, Constant Paquet, a weaver, was Delphine, whose modest, respectable life Marie could not help envying. “She has done a thousand times better by staying in the village,” she would remark to Romain. “How much happier she is.… And how misguided I was to have tried to persuade her to live a life like mine!” And yet, when Clotilde arrived after little more than a fortnight,
saying that she was wanted back in Paris, Marie needed no persuasion to return.
Olympe planned to take her on a tour of the German spas, but first they were to travel to Brussels for the social event of the summer. This was the inauguration of the Great Northern Railway, launching a new line from Paris whose significance for a new era of European travel was greeted with excitement (Berlioz had composed a cantata in celebration). “Over there is the Ocean and the Mediterranean, behind is England … the world and Paris at the center of the universe!” exclaimed Jules Janin, one of numerous journalists covering the occasion. Assembling a spectacular wardrobe for the trip but more susceptible than ever to feverish chills, even in June, Marie had ordered a selection of furs from Révillon to be delivered to her on deposit—coats of ermine, sable, and wolf. Vienne says that the couple left in a chaise de poste “without having said goodbye to anyone,” but in fact the cortege bound for Brussels traveled from Paris by train. At four in the morning on Saturday, June 13, three thousand people set off on the journey, although only three hundred would attend the grand soirée the following evening. It was an impressive gathering, according to Janin, a “moving mass of nations”—the royalty and nobility of Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, and Flanders—uniformed men decked with medals, dowagers displaying ancient jewels, and Europe’s most elegant women. Marie, although more pallid than usual, stood out among them all, writes Janin.
She had gained admission to the ball in spite of her reputation, favored by her dazzling beauty.… A flattering frisson greeted her as she passed along, and even those who knew her identity bowed; while she, calm and dignified as ever, accepted this homage as though it were her due.… More than one prince stopped to gaze at her, and she knew exactly the meaning of their looks: “I think you are very splendid, and I’m sorry I have to let you go.”
That evening she was leaning on the arm of a stranger, as fair as a German, and as sedate as an Englishman, overdressed, with clothes fitting him too tightly, who was walking quite erect, and believing that he was committing one of those acts of derring-do, which men regret to their dying day. This gentleman’s demeanour displeased the sensitive girl on his arm; she felt it with that sixth sense within her, and she became haughtier, for her shrewd instinct told her that the more this man was ashamed of what he had done, the more insolent she should show herself to be, and contemptuously trample under foot the remorse of the timid youth.
This was the young blond man named Prince Paul by Vienne. “He had regular features, eyes pale and lustreless; thick, sensual lips—a physique that altogether lacked expression. There was a touch of English haughtiness in his attitude and of Teutonic stiffness in his manners, which was unsympathetic.… On first acquaintance one judged him unfavorably.” Vienne describes him as being very close to Liszt, but, if so, he was not known to Janin, who watched Marie punish the “Anglo-German” for his reservations about her. At the end of a long, well-lit corridor, she caught sight of someone she knew—“a friend without any pretensions … one of our own acquaintances, an artist, a painter.” Clearly, this was Olympe Aguado. “Ah, here you are!” she said to him; “give me your arm, and let us have a dance.” Abandoning her companion, she began a Strauss waltz.
She danced marvellously … scarcely touching the ground with her light feet, now bounding, then pausing, keeping her eyes fixed on those of her partner. A circle formed round her; everyone tried to be brushed by her beautiful hair, which followed the movement of the rapid waltz, and everyone strove to be grazed by her light dress, exhaling such delicate perfumes.
From Brussels Marie went on to Spa, where the doctors insisted that she must rest more to restore her health. For a few days she did as she was told, going for walks or reading quietly under the trees. She wrote a letter while she was there to her horse dealer, Tony, who had become extremely attached to her.
Dear friend, don’t be too resentful about my negligence in writing to you, and please don’t think that it is due to forgetfulness or indifference towards you. I am very happy about your friendship, but you know, that among my numerous faults, laziness is not the last on the list.
You must understand that my long country walks do not encourage me to write stylishly, and far from accusing me, you should appreciate the tremendous effort I am making to overcome the sleepiness that overwhelms me.
Goodbye, dear Tony, no more, otherwise I am afraid of boring you, so goodbye, with a thousand good wishes,
Marie Duplessis.
A thousand thanks for your sympathy towards me. Dear, do not sell my carriage.
Soon, I will have the pleasure of seeing you, at least I hope so.
MD
But her good intentions were in vain. She was seen by day on horseback, recklessly clearing high hedges, and spending most of her evening hours in the casino. “In Spa no other fever is known than ball fever, no other remedies but those of talking, dancing, music and the excitement of gambling,” writes Janin, who, needless to say, was there himself, noting Marie’s every move.
Our fair friend was welcomed with an eagerness somewhat rare in this rather prudish village.… Soon she became the lioness of this beautiful spot, and the life and spirit of every party and ball. She made the orchestra play her favorite tunes; and when night came, when a little sleep would have done her so much good, she terrified the most intrepid gamblers by the heaps of gold she piled up before her, and lost at a single stake, as indifferent to gain as she was to loss.
In his book Consumptives and Great Lovers, Dr. Cabanes sees this kind of euphoria as a symptom of the disease. He quotes a remark made by the eighteenth-century salonnière Julie de Lespinasse, in a letter to a friend, “I do not know if it is my ill health,” she wrote, “but I have never been so pressed to live.”
Marie’s frenzied routine was not appreciated by Olympe, who had left Paris to relax and be reinvigorated by the mountains and panoramas. The count was happiest when he was somewhere wild and rustic, Vienne says, and his sketches capture his passion for nature—poetic studies of landscapes flooded with sunlight, trees reflected in water, woods casting mysterious shadows—the tranquil, topographical scenes that would define his pioneering photographs a decade later. But despite his own inclinations he understood the reason for Marie’s fast living and put two hundred thousand francs at her disposal. In three weeks she had lost half, according to Vienne, only to win most of it back again. “Losses left her indifferent, gain only gave her mediocre satisfaction,” he says, echoing Janin’s remark.
Either with or without Olympe, Marie then traveled to Baden-Baden, staying once again at the Hôtel de l’Europe, before moving on to Biebrich, Koblenz, Wiesbaden, and Ems. And then, suddenly, it was all too much. Her philosophy of carpe diem, of squeezing pleasure out of every second, seemed pathetically superficial now that death loomed so close. What she began to crave was some kind of spiritual redemption—her own Traviata moment of reconciliation and atonement. Feeling ashamed of her treatment of Ned Perregaux, she wrote him a farewell letter.
Pardon me, my dear Edouard, I kneel to you in begging your forgiveness. If you love me enough for this I ask of you only two words, my pardon and your friendship. Write to me, poste restante at Ems, duchy of Nassau. I am alone here and very ill. So, dear Edouard, quickly, your forgiveness.
Adieu.
By mid-September, Marie was back in Paris, trying out all manner of remedies, each offering a touch of hope. She ordered packets of sulfate of quinine, almond milk, a lichen tisane, a syrup of asparagus spears, and bottles of asses’ milk (an ancient Arabic cure for diarrhea). Nothing, though, could relieve her insomnia, and she would pace her apartment throughout the night, talking to a yellow-and-blue parrot perched on her shoulder or to the dogs she adored—spaniels Duchesse and Chéri, and Dache, a magnificent hunter. Sometimes she was seen on her balcony above the boulevard, her head draped in a cashmere shawl, her thin frame lost in a copious white dressing gown. “When the night was pitch black, it was like seeing an apparition.” Marie
’s neighbor Clémence Prat was a rare visitor, always making some excuse for her absence, as Marie was no longer of use to her.
Tuberculosis in its final stages is anything but romantic, with the dying incapacitated by paroxysmal coughs, chills, and night sweats, visibly wasting away as the disease spreads to other organs of the body. Almost all Marie’s friends had abandoned her, and watching Paris life go on in the street below her window, she felt as solitary as Marguerite. “I saw some faces I knew. They passed rapidly, joyous and carefree, but not one lifted his eyes to my window.”
Her affair with Olympe was over. They had made a pact to part on their return to Paris, while remaining good friends. He told Marie that he wanted to keep his freedom and have only casual liaisons, but this was not the case. In 1846, Olympe became deeply involved with a countess married to an Englishman, a Mrs. Adrian Hope, who remained his mistress for the next five years. When Romain visited Marie, she was in tears over Olympe, whom she said she had come to love without his knowing it. Olympe, though, was true to his word about their friendship. He remained as generous as ever, and he went out of his way to spend time with her.
The Girl Who Loved Camellias: The Life and Legend of Marie Duplessis Page 19