The Lady of the Camellias (21 page)

“What followed that fateful night you know as well as I do, but what you do not know, what you cannot suspect, is how much I have suffered since our separation.

“I had learned your father had taken you away, but I doubted you could live apart from me for long, and the day I saw you on the Champs-Élysées, I was moved, but not stunned.

“Then began that series of days, each of which brought me a new insult from you, an insult I received almost with joy, as, besides the fact that it was proof you still loved me, it seemed to me that the more you persecuted me, the more I would be exalted in your eyes on the day when you would learn the truth.

“Don't be astonished by this joyful martyr, Armand; the love you had for me opened my heart to noble enthusiasms.

“However, at the beginning, I was not so strong.

“Between the execution of the sacrifice I had made for you and your return, a long time passed, during which I needed medicine to preserve my sanity and to blot out the life I had thrown myself back into. Prudence told you, did she not, that I went to all the fêtes, all the balls, all the wild parties?

“I had the notion that I might kill myself quickly through excess, and I believe that this hope did not delay in starting to come true. My health, of necessity, was more and more altered, and the day I sent Mme Duvernoy to ask you to spare me, I was worn ragged, body and soul.

“I will not remind you, Armand, in what way you rewarded the last proof of love I gave you, and by what outrage you chased from Paris the woman who, though she was dying, could not resist your voice when you asked her for a night of love, and who, like a madwoman, believed, for a moment, that she could knit back together the past and the present. You had the right to do what you did, Armand; my nights have not always been bought at so high a price!

“I left everything then! Olympe replaced me at M. de N . . . 's side, and took it upon herself, I am told, to tell him the reason for my departure. The Comte de G . . . was in London. He is one of those men who, believing that love affairs with girls like me are of no more consequence than any other agreeable pastime, remain friends with the women they have possessed, and have no hatred, since they have never known jealousy; he is, in short, one of those great lords who open only one corner of their hearts to us, but both sides of their wallets. I thought of him at once. I went to find him. He received me splendidly, but he was the lover of a society woman there and feared he would compromise himself if he were connected with me. He introduced me to his friends, who gave a supper for me, after which one of them took me home.

“What did you expect me to do, my friend? Kill myself? That would have been to burden your life, which I wanted to be happy, with useless remorse—and then again, why kill oneself when one is so close to death?

“I passed into the state of a body without a soul, a thing without thought. I lived for some time a sort of automatic life, then I returned to Paris and asked after you; I learned then that you had left for a long journey. There was no longer anything to sustain me. My existence became again what it had been two years before I met you. I tried to get the duke back, but I had wounded him too deeply, and old men are impatient, doubtless because they know they are not immortal. The illness took me over; day by day, I was pale, I was sad, I grew still thinner. Men who buy love like to inspect the merchandise before they take it. There were women in Paris in finer form than I was, plumper than I was; people forgot about me a little. That is the past, up until yesterday.

“Now I am quite sick. I wrote to the duke to ask him for money, as I don't have any and the creditors have come back, and bring me their notes with merciless persistence. Will the duke respond? Why are you not in Paris, Armand! You would come see me, and your visits would soothe me.”

“December 20.

“The weather is horrible; it's snowing. I am alone at home. For three days I have had such a fever that I have been unable to write you a word. Nothing new, my friend; each day I hope vaguely for a letter from you, but it doesn't come, and no doubt it never will. Only men have the strength not to forgive. The duke has not replied to me.

“Prudence has resumed her visits to the pawnshop.

“I never stop spitting blood. Oh! I would upset you if you saw me. You are very lucky to be under a warm sky, not surrounded as I am by an icy winter that weighs down your chest. Today I got up for a little while, and through the curtains at my window I watched the life of Paris passing by, the life I thought had ended. Some faces I recognized passed by in the street, rapid, joyful, careless. Not one raised his eyes to my windows. However, some young people came by and left their names. There was a time before, when I was sick, when you—who did not know me, who had received nothing from me but an impertinence on the day I first met you—you came to get news of me every morning. Now I'm sick again. We spent six months together. I had as much love for you as the heart of a woman can hold and give, and you are far away, and you condemn me, and no word of consolation comes from you. But it is only chance that causes this abandonment, I am sure. Because if you were in Paris, you would not leave my bedside, or my room.”

“December 25.

“My doctor forbids me to write every day. In truth my memories only heighten my fever, but yesterday I received a letter that did me some good, more for the sentiments that it expressed than for the material relief it brought me. I can therefore write to you today. This letter was from your father, and here is what it contained:

MADAM,

I have just learned that you are sick. If I were in Paris, I would go myself to learn your news; if my son were beside me, I would tell him to go find it out, but I cannot leave C . . . , and Armand is six or seven hundred leagues away. Permit me, therefore, simply to write you, Madam, and to tell you how saddened I am to hear of your illness, and to believe in my sincere wishes for your prompt recovery.

One of my good friends, M. H . . . , will present himself at your home; please receive him. He has been charged by me with a commission whose result I await impatiently.

Please accept, Madam, the assurance of my most distinguished sentiments.

“Such is the letter I received. Your father has a noble heart; love him well, my friend, for there are few men in the world as worthy of being loved. This paper signed with his name did me more good than all the prescriptions of our great doctor.

“This morning M. H . . . came. He seemed quite embarrassed by the delicate commission M. Duval had entrusted to him. He came quite simply to bring me a thousand francs from your father. At first I wanted to refuse, but M. H . . . told me that such a refusal would give offense to M. Duval, who had authorized him to give me this sum, and in future to give me anything more I might require. I accepted this service, which, on your father's part, cannot be seen as charity. If I am dead when you return, show your father what I just wrote about him, and tell him that in writing these lines, the poor girl he deigned to write that consoling letter shed tears of gratitude and prayed to God for his sake.”

“January 4.

“I just emerged from a series of very painful days. I did not know the body could cause such suffering. Oh! The life I led! I am paying for it twice today.

“Someone was here to watch over me every night. I could no longer breathe. Delirium and cough were sharing the remnants of my poor existence.

“My dining room is filled with candy, with gifts of all kinds that my friends have brought me. No doubt there are, among those people, some who hope I will be their mistress later. If they saw what my illness has done to me, they would flee in terror.

“Prudence is giving away my New Year's presents as her own.

“A thaw is setting in, and the doctor has told me that I will be able to go out in a few days if the good weather continues.”

“January 8.

“I went out yesterday in my carriage. The weather was magnificent. The Champs-Élysées was full of people. You might have said it was the first smile of the spring. Everything around me took on an air of celebration. I never suspected I could find so much joy, sweetness, and consolation in a ray of sunshine as I did yesterday.

“I saw nearly all the people I know, still cheerful, still busy with their pleasures. It is only the lucky who don't know their luck! Olympe passed by in an elegant carriage that M. de N . . . had given her. She tried to insult me with a glance. She does not know how far removed I am from such trifles. A nice boy I've known for a long time asked me if I would have supper with him, and with one of his friends who wants very much to meet me, he said.

“I smiled sadly, and gave him my hand, burning with fever.

“I've never seen a more startled expression.

“I went home at four o'clock. I ate with appetite enough.

“This outing did me good.

“If only I would get better!

“How the vision of life and happiness in others rekindles the desire to live in those who, the night before, in the solitude of their souls and the shadow of the sickroom, longed to die quickly.”

“January 10.

“This hope of renewed health was nothing but a dream. Here I am again in my bed, my body covered with burning plasters. Go put this body that fetched so high a price in former times on offer, and see what you can get for it today!

“We must have done something truly wicked before we were born, or some great happiness must be in store for us after our deaths, for God to permit so many tortures of expiation, so many painful trials, in this life.”

“January 12.

“I am always sick.

“The Comte de N . . . sent me money yesterday; I did not accept it. I want nothing from that man. He is the one who is responsible for the fact that you are not near me.

“Oh! Our beautiful days in Bougival! Where are you?

“If I leave this room alive, it will be to make a pilgrimage to the house where we lived together, but I will leave it only when I am dead.

“Who knows if I will be able to write to you tomorrow?”

“January 25.

“For eleven nights I have not slept. I am suffocating, and every instant I think that I will die. The doctor has ordered that nobody permit me to touch a pen. Julie Duprat, who watches over me, allows me still to write you a few lines. Will you not come back before I die, then? Is it, then, eternally over between us? It seems to me that if you were to come, I would get better. What good would getting better do?”

“January 28.

“This morning I was awoken by a loud noise. Julie, who was sleeping in my room, ran into the dining room. I heard the voices of men, against which hers fought in vain. She came back crying.

“They had come to repossess my things. I told her to let them execute what they called justice. The bailiff came in to my bedroom, his hat on his head. He opened the drawers, wrote down everything he saw, and did not seem to notice that there was a woman dying in the bed that, happily, the charity of the law allows me to keep.

“He consented to tell me as he left that I could file an appeal within nine days, but he left a guard! What is to become of me, my God! This scene made me even sicker than before. Prudence wanted to go ask for money from your father's friend; I opposed it.

“I received your letter this morning. How I needed it. Will my reply reach you in time? Will you see me again? This has been a happy day, one that has allowed me to forget all those that have passed during these last six weeks. I feel as if I were better, in spite of the mood of sadness that colored my response to you.

“After all, one must not always be unhappy.

“When I think it may happen that I will not die, that you will come back to me, that I will see spring again, that you will love me again, and that we might begin again our life of last year!

“I'm such a fool! I can hardly hold the pen with which I am writing to you this senseless dream of my heart.

“Whatever may come, I loved you well, Armand, and I would have died long ago if I did not have the memory of that love to help me, and the vague hope of seeing you again beside me.”

“February 4.

“The Comte de G . . . came back. His mistress was unfaithful to him. He is very sad; he loved her very much. He came to tell me about it. The poor boy's business is in a bad state, which didn't prevent him from paying off my bailiff and sending away the guard.

“I spoke to him of you, and he promised to speak to you of me. How I forgot in those moments that I had been his mistress, and how he tried to make me forget it too! He has a good heart.

“The duke sent yesterday for news of me, and he came this morning. I don't know what it is that keeps the old man living. He stayed three hours at my side, and he did not say twenty words to me. Two great tears fell from his eyes when he saw me so pale. It was the memory of the death of his daughter that made him cry, no doubt.

“Now he will have seen her die twice. His back is humped, his head points to the ground, his lip is pendulous, his gaze extinguished. Age and sorrow have laid their double weight on his exhausted back. He made me no reproach. You might even have said he secretly rejoiced at the ravages the illness has worked on me. He seemed proud to be standing upright, while I, still young, was crushed by suffering.

“Bad times have returned. Nobody comes to see me. Julie watches over me, and stays beside me as much as possible. Prudence, whom I can't give as much money to as I did in the past, has started to invent pretexts to stay away.

“Now that I am near death, despite everything the doctors tell me—for I have several, which proves my illness is worsening—I almost regret having listened to your father. If I had known that I would take only one year from your future, I would not have resisted the desire to spend that year with you, and at least I would have died holding the hand of a friend. It is true that if we had lived together this year, I would not have died so soon.