Chapter I

In my opinion, it is impossible to create characters until one has

spent a long time in studying men, as it is impossible to speak a

language until it has been seriously acquired. Not being old enough to

invent, I content myself with narrating, and I beg the reader to assure

himself of the truth of a story in which all the characters, with the

exception of the heroine, are still alive. Eye-witnesses of the greater

part of the facts which I have collected are to be found in Paris, and

I might call upon them to confirm me if my testimony is not enough.

And, thanks to a particular circumstance, I alone can write these

things, for I alone am able to give the final details, without which it

would have been impossible to make the story at once interesting and

complete.

This is how these details came to my knowledge. On the 12th of March,

1847, I saw in the Rue Lafitte a great yellow placard announcing a sale

of furniture and curiosities. The sale was to take place on account of

the death of the owner. The owner’s name was not mentioned, but the

sale was to be held at 9, Rue d’Antin, on the 16th, from 12 to 5. The

placard further announced that the rooms and furniture could be seen on

the 13th and 14th.

I have always been very fond of curiosities, and I made up my mind not

to miss the occasion, if not of buying some, at all events of seeing

them. Next day I called at 9, Rue d’Antin.

It was early in the day, and yet there were already a number of

visitors, both men and women, and the women, though they were dressed

in cashmere and velvet, and had their carriages waiting for them at the

door, gazed with astonishment and admiration at the luxury which they

saw before them.

I was not long in discovering the reason of this astonishment and

admiration, for, having begun to examine things a little carefully, I

discovered without difficulty that I was in the house of a kept woman.

Now, if there is one thing which women in society would like to see

(and there were society women there), it is the home of those women

whose carriages splash their own carriages day by day, who, like them,

side by side with them, have their boxes at the Opera and at the

Italiens, and who parade in Paris the opulent insolence of their

beauty, their diamonds, and their scandal.

This one was dead, so the most virtuous of women could enter even her

bedroom. Death had purified the air of this abode of splendid foulness,

and if more excuse were needed, they had the excuse that they had

merely come to a sale, they knew not whose. They had read the placards,

they wished to see what the placards had announced, and to make their

choice beforehand. What could be more natural? Yet, all the same, in

the midst of all these beautiful things, they could not help looking

about for some traces of this courtesan’s life, of which they had

heard, no doubt, strange enough stories.

Unfortunately the mystery had vanished with the goddess, and, for all

their endeavours, they discovered only what was on sale since the

owner’s decease, and nothing of what had been on sale during her

lifetime. For the rest, there were plenty of things worth buying. The

furniture was superb; there were rosewood and buhl cabinets and tables,

Sevres and Chinese vases, Saxe statuettes, satin, velvet, lace; there

was nothing lacking.

I sauntered through the rooms, following the inquisitive ladies of

distinction. They entered a room with Persian hangings, and I was just

going to enter in turn, when they came out again almost immediately,

smiling, and as if ashamed of their own curiosity. I was all the more

eager to see the room. It was the dressing-room, laid out with all the

articles of toilet, in which the dead woman’s extravagance seemed to be

seen at its height.

On a large table against the wall, a table three feet in width and six

in length, glittered all the treasures of Aucoc and Odiot. It was a

magnificent collection, and there was not one of those thousand little

things so necessary to the toilet of a woman of the kind which was not

in gold or silver. Such a collection could only have been got together

little by little, and the same lover had certainly not begun and ended

it.

Not being shocked at the sight of a kept woman’s dressing-room, I

amused myself with examining every detail, and I discovered that these

magnificently chiselled objects bore different initials and different

coronets. I looked at one after another, each recalling a separate

shame, and I said that God had been merciful to the poor child, in not

having left her to pay the ordinary penalty, but rather to die in the

midst of her beauty and luxury, before the coming of old age, the

courtesan’s first death.

Is there anything sadder in the world than the old age of vice,

especially in woman? She preserves no dignity, she inspires no

interest. The everlasting repentance, not of the evil ways followed,

but of the plans that have miscarried, the money that has been spent in

vain, is as saddening a thing as one can well meet with. I knew an aged

woman who had once been “gay,” whose only link with the past was a

daughter almost as beautiful as she herself had been. This poor

creature to whom her mother had never said, “You are my child,” except

to bid her nourish her old age as she herself had nourished her youth,

was called Louise, and, being obedient to her mother, she abandoned

herself without volition, without passion, without pleasure, as she

would have worked at any other profession that might have been taught

her.

The constant sight of dissipation, precocious dissipation, in addition

to her constant sickly state, had extinguished in her mind all the

knowledge of good and evil that God had perhaps given her, but that no

one had ever thought of developing. I shall always remember her, as she

passed along the boulevards almost every day at the same hour,

accompanied by her mother as assiduously as a real mother might have

accompanied her daughter. I was very young then, and ready to accept

for myself the easy morality of the age. I remember, however, the

contempt and disgust which awoke in me at the sight of this scandalous

chaperoning. Her face, too, was inexpressibly virginal in its

expression of innocence and of melancholy suffering. She was like a

figure of Resignation.

One day the girl’s face was transfigured. In the midst of all the

debauches mapped out by her mother, it seemed to her as if God had left

over for her one happiness. And why indeed should God, who had made her

without strength, have left her without consolation, under the

sorrowful burden of her life? One day, then, she realized that she was

to have a child, and all that remained to her of chastity leaped for

joy. The soul has strange refuges. Louise ran to tell the good news to

her mother. It is a shameful thing to speak of, but we are not telling

tales of pleasant sins; we are telling of true facts, which it would be

better, no doubt, to pass over in silence, if we did not believe that

it is needful from time to time to reveal the martyrdom of those who

are condemned without hearing, scorned without judging; shameful it is,

but this mother answered the daughter that they had already scarce

enough for two, and would certainly not have enough for three; that

such children are useless, and a lying-in is so much time lost.

Next day a midwife, of whom all we will say is that she was a friend of

the mother, visited Louise, who remained in bed for a few days, and

then got up paler and feebler than before.

Three months afterward a man took pity on her and tried to heal her,

morally and physically; but the last shock had been too violent, and

Louise died of it. The mother still lives; how? God knows.

This story returned to my mind while I looked at the silver toilet

things, and a certain space of time must have elapsed during these

reflections, for no one was left in the room but myself and an

attendant, who, standing near the door, was carefully watching me to

see that I did not pocket anything.

I went up to the man, to whom I was causing so much anxiety. “Sir,” I

said, “can you tell me the name of the person who formerly lived here?”

“Mademoiselle Marguerite Gautier.”

I knew her by name and by sight.

“What!” I said to the attendant; “Marguerite Gautier is dead?”

“Yes, sir.”

“When did she die?”

“Three weeks ago, I believe.”

“And why are the rooms on view?”

“The creditors believe that it will send up the prices. People can see

beforehand the effect of the things; you see that induces them to buy.”

“She was in debt, then?”

“To any extent, sir.”

“But the sale will cover it?”

“And more too.”

“Who will get what remains over?”

“Her family.”

“She had a family?”

“It seems so.”

“Thanks.”

The attendant, reassured as to my intentions, touched his hat, and I

went out.

“Poor girl!” I said to myself as I returned home; “she must have had a

sad death, for, in her world, one has friends only when one is

perfectly well.” And in spite of myself I began to feel melancholy over

the fate of Marguerite Gautier.

It will seem absurd to many people, but I have an unbounded sympathy

for women of this kind, and I do not think it necessary to apologize

for such sympathy.

One day, as I was going to the Prefecture for a passport, I saw in one

of the neighbouring streets a poor girl who was being marched along by

two policemen. I do not know what was the matter. All I know is that

she was weeping bitterly as she kissed an infant only a few months old,

from whom her arrest was to separate her. Since that day I have never

dared to despise a woman at first sight.