Her face, a marvel, was the object of her most fastidious attentions. It was quite small and, as Musset might have said, her mother had surely made it so to ensure it was fashioned with care.
Upon an oval of indescribable loveliness, place two dark eyes beneath brows so cleanly arched that they might have been painted on; veil those eyes with lashes so long that, when lowered, they cast shadows over the pink flush of the cheeks; sketch a delicate, straight, spirited nose and nostrils slightly flared in a passionate aspiration towards sensuality; draw a regular mouth with lips parting gracefully over teeth as white as milk; tint the skin with the bloom of peaches which no hand has touched ?and you will have a comprehensive picture of her entrancing face.
Her jet-black hair, naturally or artfully waved, was parted over her forehead in two thick coils which vanished behind her head, just exposing the lobes of her ears from which hung two diamonds each worth four or five thousand francs.
Exactly how the torrid life she led could possibly have left on Marguerite's face the virginal, even childlike expression which made it distinctive, is something which we are forced to record as a fact which we cannot comprehend.
Marguerite possessed a marvelous portrait of herself by Vidal, the only man whose pencil strokes could capture her to the life. After her death, this portrait came into my keeping for a few days and the likeness was so striking that it has helped me to furnish details for which memory alone might not have sufficed.
Some of the particulars contained in the present chapter did not become known to me until some time later, but I set them down here so as not to have to return to them once the narrative account of this woman's life has begun.
Marguerite was present at all first nights and spent each evening in the theatre or at the ball. Whenever a new play was performed, you could be sure of seeing her there with three things which she always had with her and which always occupied the ledge of her box in the stalls: her opera- glasses, a box of sweets and a bunch of camellias.
For twenty-five days in every month the camellias were white, and for five they were red. No one ever knew the reason for this variation in colour which I mention but cannot explain, and which those who frequented the theatres where she was seen most often, and her friends too, had noticed as I had.
Marguerite had never been seen with any flowers but camellias. Because of this, her florist, Madame Barjon, had finally taken to calling her the Lady of the Camellias, and the name had remained with her.
Like all who move in certain social circles in Paris, I knew further that Marguerite had been the mistress of the most fashionable young men, that she admitted the fact openly, and that they themselves boasted of it. Which only went to show that loves and mistress were well pleased with each other.
However, for some three years previously, ever since a visit she had made to Bagneres, she was said to be living with just one man, an elderly foreign duke who was fabulously wealthy and had attempted to detach her as far as possible form her old life. This she seems to have been happy enough to go along with.
Here is what I have been told of the matter.
In the spring of 1842, Marguerite was so weak, so altered in her looks, that the doctors had ordered her to take the waters. She accordingly set out for Bagneres.
Among the other sufferers there, was the Duke's daughter who not only had the same complaint but a face so like Marguerite's that they could have been taken for sisters. The fact was that the young Duchess was in the tertiary stage of consumption and, only days after Marguerite's arrival, she succumbed.
One morning the Duke, who had remained at Bagneres just as people will remain on ground where a piece of their heart lies buried, caught sight of Marguerite as she turned a corner of a gravel walk.
It seemed as though he was seeing the spirit of his dead child and, going up to her, he took both her hands, embraced her tearfully and, without asking who she was, begged leave to call on her and to love in her person the living image of his dead daughter.
Marguerite, alone at Bagneres with her maid, and in any case having nothing to lose by compromising herself, granted the Duke what he asked.
Now there were a number of people at Bagneres who knew her, and they made a point of calling on the Duke to inform him of Mademoiselle Gautier's true situation. It was a terrible blow for the old man, for any resemblance with his daughter stopped there. But it was too late. The young woman had become an emotional necessity, his only pretext and his sole reason for living.
He did not reproach her, he had no right to, but he did ask her if she felt that she could change her way of life, and, in exchange for this sacrifice, offered all the compensations she could want. She agreed.
It should be said that at this juncture Marguerite, who was by nature somewhat highly strung, was seriously ill. Her past appeared to her to be one of the major causes of her illness, and a kind of superstition led her to hope that God would allow her to keep her beauty and her health in exchange for her repentance and conversion.
And indeed the waters, the walks, healthy fatigue and sleep had almost restored her fully by the end of that summer.
The Duke accompanied Marguerite to Paris, where he continued to call on her as at Bagneres.
This liaison, of which the true origin and true motive were known to no one, gave rise here to a great deal of talk, since the Duke, known hitherto as an enormously wealthy man, now began to acquire a name for the prodigality.
The relationship between the old Duke and the young woman was put down to the salacity which is frequently found in rich old men. People imagined all manner of things, except the truth.
The truth was that the affection of this father for Marguerite was a feeling so chaste, that anything more than a closeness of hearts would have seemed incestuous in his eyes. Never once had he said a single word to her that his daughter could not have heard.
The last thing we wish is to make our heroine seem anything other than what she was. We shall say therefore that, as long as she remained at Bagneres, the promise given to the Duke had not been difficult to keep, and she had kept it. But once she was back in Paris, it seemed to her, accustomed as she was to a life of dissipation, balls and even orgies, that her new-found solitude, broken only by the periodic visits of the Duke, would make her die of boredom, and the scorching winds of her former life blew hot on both her head and her heart.
Add to this that Marguerite had returned from her travels more beautiful than she had ever been, that she was twenty years old and that her illness, subdued but far from conquered, continued to stir in her those feverish desires which are almost invariably a result of consumptive disorders.
The Duke was therefore sadly grieved the day his friends, constantly on the watch for scandalous indiscretions on the part of the young woman with whom he was, they said, compromising himself, called to inform him, indeed to prove to him that at those times when she could count on his not appearing, she was in the habit of receiving other visitors, and that these visitors often stayed until the following morning.
When the Duke questioned her, Marguerite admitted everything, and, without a second thought, advised him not to concern himself with her any more, saying she did not have the strength to keep faith with the pledges she had given, and adding that she had no wish to go on receiving the liberalities of a man whom she was deceiving.
The Duke stayed away for a week, but this was as long as he could manage. One week later to the day, he came and implored Marguerite to take him back, promising to accept her as she was, provided that he could see her, and swearing that he would die before he uttered a single word of reproach.
This was how things stood three months after Marguerite's return, that is, in November or December 1842.
Chapter 3
All the famous names from the world of fashionable vice were there. They were being slyly observed by a number of society ladies who had again used the sale as a pretext for claiming the right to see, at close quarters, women in whose company they would not otherwise have had occasion to find themselves, and whose easy pleasures they perhaps secretly envied.
The Duchesse de F rubbed shoulders with Mademoiselle A, one of sorriest specimens of our modern courtesans; the Marquise de T shrank from buying an item of furniture for which the bidding was led by Madame D, the most elegant and most celebrated adulteress of our age; the Duc d'Y, who is believed in Madrid to be ruining himself in Paris, and in Paris to be ruining himself in Madrid, and who, when all is said and done, cannot even spend all his income, while continuing to chat with Madame M, one of our wittiest tale-tellers, who occasionally agrees to write down what she says and to sign what she writes, was exchanging confidential glances with Madame de N, the beauty who may be regularly seen driving on the Champs-Elysees, dressed almost invariably in pink or blue, in a carriage drawn by two large black horses sold to her by Tony for ten thousand francs...and paid for in full; lastly, Mademoiselle R, who by sheer talent makes twice what ladies of fashion make with their dowries, and three times as much as what the rest make out of their love affairs, had come in spite of the cold to make a few purchases, and it was not she who attracted the fewest eyes.
We could go on quoting the initials of many of those who had gathered in that drawing room and who were not a little astonished at the company they kept; but we should, we fear, weary the reader.
Suffice it to say that everyone was in the highest spirits and that, of all the women there, many had known the dead girl and gave no sign that they remembered her.
There was much loud laughter; the auctioneers shouted at the tops of their voices; the dealers who had crowded on to the benches placed in front of the auction tables called vainly for silence in which to conduct their business in peace. Never was a gathering more varied and more uproarious.
I slipped unobtrusively into the middle of the distressing tumult, saddened to think that all this was taking place next to the very room where the unfortunate creature whose furniture was being sold up to pay her debts, had breathed her last. Having come to observe rather than to buy, I watched the faces of the tradesmen who had forced the sale and whose features lit up each time an item reached a price they had never dared hope for.
Honest, men all, who had speculated in the prostitution of this woman, had obtained a one hundred per cent return on her, had dogged the last moments of her life with writs, and came after she was dead to claim both the fruits of their honourable calculations and the interest accruing on the shameful credit they had given her.
How right were the Ancients who had one God for merchants and thieves!
Dresses, Indian shawls, jewels, came under the hammer at an unbelievable rate. None of it took my fancy, and I waited on.
Suddenly I heard a voice shout:
'A book fully bound, gilt-edges, entitled: Manon Lescaut. There's something written on the first page: ten francs. '
'Twelve, ' said a voice, after a longish silence.
'Fifteen, ' I said.
Why? I had no idea. No doubt for that 'something written'.
'Fifteen, ' repeated the auctioneer.
'Thirty, ' said the first bidder, in a tone which seemed to defy anybody to go higher.
It was becoming a fight.
'Thirty-five!' I cried, in the same tone of voice.
'Forty.'
'Fifty.'
'Sixty.'
'A hundred.'
I confess that if I had set out to cause a stir, I would have succeeded completely, for my last bid was followed by a great silence, and people stared at me to see who this man was who seemed so intent on possessing the volume.
Apparently the tone in which I had made my latest bid was enough for my opponent: he chose therefore to abandon a struggle which would have served only to cost me ten times what the book was worth and, with a bow, he said very graciously but a little late:
'It's yours, sir.'
No other bids were forthcoming, and the book was knocked down to me.
Since I feared a new onset of obstinacy which my vanity might conceivably have borne but which would have assuredly proved too much for my purse, I gave my name, asked for the volume to be put aside and left by the stairs. I must have greatly intrigued the onlookers who, having witnessed this scene, doubtless wondered why on earth I had gone there to pay a hundred francs for a book that I could have got anywhere for ten or fifteen at most.
An hour later, I had sent round for my purchase.
On the first page, written in ink in an elegant hand, was the dedication of the person who had given the book. This dedication consisted simply of these words:
'Manon to Marguerite,
Humility.'
It was signed: Armand Duval.
What did this word 'Humility' mean?
Was it that Manon, in the opinion of this Monsieur Armand Duval, acknowledged Marguerite as her superior in debauchery or in true love?
The second interpretation seemed the more likely, for the first was impertinently frank, and Marguerite could never have accepted it, whatever opinion she had of herself.
I went out again and thought no more of the book until that night, when I retired to bed.
Manon Lescaut is a truly touching story every detail of which is familiar to me and yet, whenever I hold a copy in my hand, an instinctive feeling for it draws me on. I open it and for the hundredth time I live again with the abbe Prevost's heroine. Now, his heroine is so lifelike that I feel that I have met her. In my new circumstances, the kind of comparison drawn between her and Marguerite added an unexpected edge to my reading, and my forbearance was swelled with pity, almost love, for the poor girl, the disposal of whose estate I could thank for possessing the volume. Manon died in a desert, it is true, but in the terms of the man who loved her with all the strength of his soul and who, when she was dead, dug a grave for her, watered it with his tears and buried his heart with her; whereas Marguerite, a sinner like Manon, and perhaps as truly converted as she, had died surrounded by fabulous luxury, if I could believe what I had seen, on the bed of her own past, but no less lost in the desert of the heart which is much more arid, much vaster and far more pitiless than the one in which Manon had been interred.
Indeed Marguerite, as I had learned from friends informed of the circumstances of her final moments, had seen no true consolation settle at her bedside during the two months when she lay slowly and painfully dying.
