So, if you wish to give as good as you get, you need to have a certain familiarity with their world, and this I did not have. Moreover, the idea that I had formed of Marguerite made her jesting seem worse to me. Nothing about this woman left me indifferent. And so, getting to my feet, I said to her with a faltering in my voice which I found impossible to conceal completely:
'If that is what you think of me, Madame, all that remains for me is to ask you to forgive my indiscretion and to take my leave, assuring you that it will not happen again.'
Thereupon, I bowed and left.
I had scarcely closed the door when I heard a third burst of laughter. I would dearly have wished for someone to try to elbow me out of his way at that moment.
I returned to my seat in the stalls.
The three knocks were sounded for the curtain to rise.
Ernest rejoined me.
'What a way to behave!' he said to me as he took his seat. 'They think you're mad.'
'What did Marguerite say after I left?'
'She laughed, and declared she'd never seen anybody funnier than you. But you mustn't think you're beaten. Just don't do women like that the honour of taking them seriously. They have no idea what good taste and manners are; it's just the same with pet dogs that have perfume poured over them ?they can't stand the smell, and go off and roll in some gutter.'
'Anyway, what's it to me?' 'I said, trying to sound offhand. 'I shan't ever see that woman again, and even if I liked her before I got to know her, everything is very different now that I have met her.'
'Bah! I wouldn't be at all surprised one of these days to see you sitting in the back of her box and hear people saying how you're ruining yourself on her account. Still, you may be right, she has no manners, but she'd make an attractive mistress all the same.'
Fortunately, the curtain went up and my friend said no more. It would be quite impossible for me to tell you what play was performed. All I remember was that, from time to time, I would glance up at the box I had left so abruptly, and that the shapes of new callers kept appearing in quick succession.
However, I was far from having put Marguerite out of my mind. Another thought now took possession of me. I felt that I had both her insulting behaviour and my discomfiture to expunge; I told myself that, even if I had to spend everything I had, I would have that woman and would take by right the place which I had vacated so quickly.
Some time before the final curtain, Marguerite and her companion left their box.
Despite myself, I rose from my seat.
'You're not leaving?' said Ernest.
'Yes.'
'Why?'
Just then, he noticed that the box was empty.
'Go on, then, ' he said, 'and good luck, or rather, better luck!'
I left.
On the stairs, I heard the rustle of dresses and the sound of voices. I stepped to one side and, without being observed, saw the two women walk by me together with the two young men who were escorting them.
In the colonnade outside the theatre, a young servant came up to the two women.
'Go and tell the coachman to wait outside the Cafe Anglais, ' said Marguerite, 'we shall go as far as there on foot.'
A few minutes later, as I loitered on the boulevard, I saw Marguerite at the window of one of the restaurant's large rooms: leaning on the balcony, she was pulling the petals one by one off the camellias in her bouquet.
One of the two men was leaning over her shoulder and was whispering to her.
I found a seat in the Maison d'Or, in one of the private rooms on the first floor, and did not take my eyes off the window in question.
At one in the morning, Marguerite got into her carriage with her three friends.
I took a cab and followed.
The carriage stopped outside 9 rue d'Antin.
Marguerite got out and went up to her apartment alone.
No doubt this happened by chance, but this chance made me very happy.
From that day on, I often encountered Marguerite at the theatre or on the Champs-Elysees. She was unchangingly gay and I was unfailingly quickened by the same emotions.
But then a fortnight passed without my seeing her anywhere. I ran into Gaston and asked him about her.
'The poor girl is very ill, ' he replied.
'What's the matter with her?'
'The matter with her is that she's got consumption and, because she lives the sort of life which is not calculated to make her better, she's in bed and dying.'
The heart is a strange thing; I was almost glad she was ill.
Every day, I called to have the latest news of the patient, though without signing the book or leaving my card. It was in this way that I learned of her convalescence and her departure for Bagneres.
Then time went by, and the impression she had made on me, if not the memory, seemed to fade gradually from my mind. I travelled; new intimacies, old habits and work took the place of thoughts of her, and whenever I did think back to that first encounter, I preferred to see the whole thing as one of those passions which one experiences in youth, and laughs at in no time at all.
Besides, there would have been no merit in vanquishing her memory, for I had lost sight of Marguerite since the time of her departure and, as I have explained to you, when she passed close to me in the passageway of the Theatre des Varietes, I did not recognize her.
She was wearing a veil, it is true; but two years earlier, however many veils she had been wearing, I would not have needed to see her to recognize her: I would have known her instinctively.
This did not prevent my heart form racing when I realized that it was her. The two years spent without seeing her, together with the effects which this separation seemed to have brought about were sent up in the same smoke by a single touch of her dress.
Chapter 8
HOWEVER (Armand went on after a pause), though I realized full well that I was still in love, I felt stronger than I had before and, in my desire to be with Marguerite again, there was also a determination to make her see that I now had the upper hand.
Many are the paths the heart will tread, and many the excuses its finds, that it may reach what it desires!
I could not therefore remain in the corridors any longer, and went back to my seat in the pit, quickly glancing around the auditorium as I did so to see in which box she was sitting.
She was in the stage-box in the stalls, and quite alone. She looked much altered, as I have told you, and I could not detect on her lips her old unconcerned smile. She had been ill; she still was.
Although it was already April, she was still dressed for winter and wore velvet.
I looked at her so insistently that my eye caught hers.
She considered me for a moment or two, reached for her opera-glasses to get a better look, and clearly thought she recognized me, though without being able to say positively who I was. For when she lowered her opera- glasses, a smile ?that captivating greeting of women ? strayed across her lips in reply to the acknowledgement the seemed to expect from me. But I made no response, as a way of asserting an advantage over her and of appearing to have forgotten while she remembered.
Believing that she was mistaken, she turned her head away.
The curtain went up.
I have seen Marguerite many times in the theatre. I never once saw her pay the slightest attention to what was happening on stage.
For me too, the play was of very little interest, and I had eyes only for her while doing my utmost to ensure that she did not notice.
It was thus that I observed her exchanging looks with the person who occupied the box opposite hers; I raised my eyes to this other box, and in it recognized a woman with whom I was reasonably familiar.
She had once been a kept woman, had tried the stage, had not succeeded and, counting on her contacts among the fashionable women of Paris, had gone into business and opened a milliner's shop.
In her, I saw a way of contriving a meeting with Marguerite, and I took advantage of a moment when she was looking in my direction to wish her a pleasant evening with hands and eyes.
What I had foreseen happened: she summoned me to her box.
Prudence Duvernoy ?such was the apt name of the milliner ?was one of those ample women of forty with whom no great diplomatic subtleties are required to get them to say what you wish to know, especially when what you wish to know is as simple as what I had to ask.
Seizing a moment when she was inaugurating a new round of signals with Marguerite, I asked her:
'Who's that you're watching?'
'Marguerite Gautier.'
'Do you know her?'
'Yes, I'm her milliner, and she's a neighbour of mine.'
'So you live in the rue d'Antin.'
'In number 7. The window of her dressing-room looks on to the window of mine.'
'They say she's a charming girl.'
'Don't you know her?'
'No, but I'd very much like to.'
'Do you want me to tell her to come across to our box?'
'No, I'd prefer you to introduce me to her.'
'At her place?'
'Yes.'
'That's more difficult.'
'Why?'
'Because she's under the protection of an old Duke who is very jealous.'
' "Protection", how charming.'
'Yes, protection, ' Prudence went on. 'Poor old thing. He'd be hard put to it to be her lover.'
Prudence then related how Marguerite had become acquainted with the Duke at Bagneres.
'And that is why, ' I continued, 'she's here on her own?'
'That's right.'
'But who'll drive her home?'
'He will.'
'So he'll come and fetch her?'
'Any minute now.'
'And who's taking you home?'
'Nobody.'
'Allow me.'
'But you're with a friend, I believe.'
'Allow us, then.'
'What's this friend of yours?'
'He's a charming fellow, very witty. He'll be delighted to meet you.'
'Very well, then, it's agreed, all four of us will leave after this play is finished, for I've seen the last one before.'
'Splendid. I'll go and tell my friend.'
'Off you go.'
I was on the point of leaving when Prudence said: 'Ah! there's the Duke just coming into Marguerite's box.'
I looked.
And indeed, a man of seventy had just sat down behind the young woman and was giving her a bag of sweets which, with a smile, she began to eat at once, and then she pushed them across the front ledge of her box with a sign to Prudence which could be translated as:
'Do you want some?'
'No, ' was Prudence's reply.
Marguerite retrieved the bag and, turning round, began chatting to the Duke.
So exact an account of all these detailed happenings must seem very childish, but anything connected with that girl is so present in my recollection that I cannot help but remember it all now.
I went down to let Gaston know what I had just arranged for him and me.
He was game.
We left our seats in the stalls and made for Madame Duvernoy's box.
We had barely opened the door leading out of the orchestra stalls when we were forced to stop and make way for Marguerite and the Duke who were leaving.
I would have given ten years of my life to have been in that old man's shoes.
When he reached the boulevard, he handed her up into a phaeton, which he drove himself, and they disappeared, borne away at a trot by two superb horses.
We entered Prudence's box.
When the play was over, we went down and got an ordinary cab which took us to 7 rue d'Antin. When we reached her door, Prudence invited us up to view her business premises, which we had never seen before, and of which she seemed very proud. You can imagine how eagerly I
accepted.
I felt that I was imperceptibly drawing closer to Marguerite. It was not long before I had turned the conversation round to her.
'Is the old Duke with your neighbour?' I asked Prudence.
'No, no; she's most likely on her own.'
'But she'll be terribly bored, ' said Gaston.
'We usually spend our evenings together or, when she gets home, she calls down to me. She never goes to bed before two in the morning. She can't get to sleep before then.'
'Why not?'
'Because she's got consumption, and she's almost always feverish.'
'Doesn't she have any lovers?' I asked.
'I never see anybody staying behind when I leave, but I don't say there's nobody comes after I've gone. When I'm there of an evening, I often come across a certain Count de N who thinks he can get somewhere with her by paying calls at eleven o'clock and sending her all the jewels she could possibly want; but she can't stand the sight of him. She's wrong, he's a very rich young man. I tell her from time to time, not that it does a bit of good: "My dear child, he's just the man for you!" She listens to me well enough ordinarily, but then she turns her back on me and answers that he is too stupid. He may be stupid, I grant you, but he'd set her up on a good footing, whereas that old Duke could die from one day to the next. Old men are selfish; his family are always on at him about his affection for Marguerite: that makes two reasons why he'll not leave her a penny. I'm forever going on at her about it, but she says that there'll still be time enough to say yes to the Count when the Duke's dead.
'It's not always much fun, ' Prudence continued, 'living the way she does. I can tell you it wouldn't do for me. I'd send the old relic packing. He's a dull old thing: he calls her his daughter, looks after her like a little child, and is forever hovering round her. I'm pretty sure that even at this time of night one of his servants is hanging about in the street to see who comes out and especially who goes in.'
'Oh, poor Marguerite!' said Gaston, sitting down at the piano and playing a waltz, 'I had no idea. Still, I have noticed that she hasn't seemed as jolly for some time now.'
