Chapter XVI

I might have told you of the beginning of this liaison in a few lines,

but I wanted you to see every step by which we came, I to agree to

whatever Marguerite wished, Marguerite to be unable to live apart from

me.

It was the day after the evening when she came to see me that I sent

her Manon Lescaut.

From that time, seeing that I could not change my mistress’s life, I

changed my own. I wished above all not to leave myself time to think

over the position I had accepted, for, in spite of myself, it was a

great distress to me. Thus my life, generally so calm, assumed all at

once an appearance of noise and disorder. Never believe, however

disinterested the love of a kept woman may be, that it will cost one

nothing. Nothing is so expensive as their caprices, flowers, boxes at

the theatre, suppers, days in the country, which one can never refuse

to one’s mistress.

As I have told you, I had little money. My father was, and still is,

_receveur général_ at C. He has a great reputation there for loyalty,

thanks to which he was able to find the security which he needed in

order to attain this position.

It is worth forty thousand francs a year, and during the ten years that

he has had it, he has paid off the security and put aside a dowry for

my sister. My father is the most honourable man in the world. When my

mother died, she left six thousand francs a year, which he divided

between my sister and myself on the very day when he received his

appointment; then, when I was twenty-one, he added to this little

income an annual allowance of five thousand francs, assuring me that

with eight thousand francs a year I might live very happily at Paris,

if, in addition to this, I would make a position for myself either in

law or medicine. I came to Paris, studied law, was called to the bar,

and, like many other young men, put my diploma in my pocket, and let

myself drift, as one so easily does in Paris.

My expenses were very moderate; only I used up my year’s income in

eight months, and spent the four summer months with my father, which

practically gave me twelve thousand francs a year, and, in addition,

the reputation of a good son. For the rest, not a penny of debt.

This, then, was my position when I made the acquaintance of Marguerite.

You can well understand that, in spite of myself, my expenses soon

increased. Marguerite’s nature was very capricious, and, like so many

women, she never regarded as a serious expense those thousand and one

distractions which made up her life. So, wishing to spend as much time

with me as possible, she would write to me in the morning that she

would dine with me, not at home, but at some restaurant in Paris or in

the country. I would call for her, and we would dine and go on to the

theatre, often having supper as well; and by the end of the evening I

had spent four or five louis, which came to two or three thousand

francs a month, which reduced my year to three months and a half, and

made it necessary for me either to go into debt or to leave Marguerite.

I would have consented to anything except the latter.

Forgive me if I give you all these details, but you will see that they

were the cause of what was to follow. What I tell you is a true and

simple story, and I leave to it all the naivete of its details and all

the simplicity of its developments.

I realized then that as nothing in the world would make me forget my

mistress, it was needful for me to find some way of meeting the

expenses into which she drew me. Then, too, my love for her had so

disturbing an influence upon me that every moment I spent away from

Marguerite was like a year, and that I felt the need of consuming these

moments in the fire of some sort of passion, and of living them so

swiftly as not to know that I was living them.

I began by borrowing five or six thousand francs on my little capital,

and with this I took to gambling. Since gambling houses were destroyed

gambling goes on everywhere. Formerly, when one went to Frascati, one

had the chance of making a fortune; one played against money, and if

one lost, there was always the consolation of saying that one might

have gained; whereas now, except in the clubs, where there is still a

certain rigour in regard to payments, one is almost certain, the moment

one gains a considerable sum, not to receive it. You will readily

understand why. Gambling is only likely to be carried on by young

people very much in need of money and not possessing the fortune

necessary for supporting the life they lead; they gamble, then, and

with this result; or else they gain, and then those who lose serve to

pay for their horses and mistresses, which is very disagreeable. Debts

are contracted, acquaintances begun about a green table end by quarrels

in which life or honour comes to grief; and though one may be an honest

man, one finds oneself ruined by very honest men, whose only defect is

that they have not two hundred thousand francs a year.

I need not tell you of those who cheat at play, and of how one hears

one fine day of their hasty disappearance and tardy condemnation.

I flung myself into this rapid, noisy, and volcanic life, which had

formerly terrified me when I thought of it, and which had become for me

the necessary complement of my love for Marguerite. What else could I

have done?

The nights that I did not spend in the Rue d’Antin, if I had spent them

alone in my own room, I could not have slept. Jealousy would have kept

me awake, and inflamed my blood and my thoughts; while gambling gave a

new turn to the fever which would otherwise have preyed upon my heart,

and fixed it upon a passion which laid hold on me in spite of myself,

until the hour struck when I might go to my mistress. Then, and by this

I knew the violence of my love, I left the table without a moment’s

hesitation, whether I was winning or losing, pitying those whom I left

behind because they would not, like me, find their real happiness in

leaving it. For the most of them, gambling was a necessity; for me, it

was a remedy. Free of Marguerite, I should have been free of gambling.

Thus, in the midst of all that, I preserved a considerable amount of

self-possession; I lost only what I was able to pay, and gained only

what I should have been able to lose.

For the rest, chance was on my side. I made no debts, and I spent three

times as much money as when I did not gamble. It was impossible to

resist an existence which gave me an easy means of satisfying the

thousand caprices of Marguerite. As for her, she continued to love me

as much, or even more than ever.

As I told you, I began by being allowed to stay only from midnight to

six o’clock, then I was asked sometimes to a box in the theatre, then

she sometimes came to dine with me. One morning I did not go till

eight, and there came a day when I did not go till twelve.

But, sooner than the moral metamorphosis, a physical metamorphosis came

about in Marguerite. I had taken her cure in hand, and the poor girl,

seeing my aim, obeyed me in order to prove her gratitude. I had

succeeded without effort or trouble in almost isolating her from her

former habits. My doctor, whom I had made her meet, had told me that

only rest and calm could preserve her health, so that in place of

supper and sleepless nights, I succeeded in substituting a hygienic

regime and regular sleep. In spite of herself, Marguerite got

accustomed to this new existence, whose salutary effects she already

realized. She began to spend some of her evenings at home, or, if the

weather was fine, she wrapped herself in a shawl, put on a veil, and we

went on foot, like two children, in the dim alleys of the

Champs-Elysées. She would come in tired, take a light supper, and go to

bed after a little music or reading, which she had never been used to

do. The cough, which every time that I heard it seemed to go through my

chest, had almost completely disappeared.

At the end of six weeks the count was entirely given up, and only the

duke obliged me to conceal my liaison with Marguerite, and even he was

sent away when I was there, under the pretext that she was asleep and

had given orders that she was not to be awakened.

The habit or the need of seeing me which Marguerite had now contracted

had this good result: that it forced me to leave the gaming-table just

at the moment when an adroit gambler would have left it. Settling one

thing against another, I found myself in possession of some ten

thousand francs, which seemed to me an inexhaustible capital.

The time of the year when I was accustomed to join my father and sister

had now arrived, and I did not go; both of them wrote to me frequently,

begging me to come. To these letters I replied as best I could, always

repeating that I was quite well and that I was not in need of money,

two things which, I thought, would console my father for my delay in

paying him my annual visit.

Just then, one fine day in summer, Marguerite was awakened by the

sunlight pouring into her room, and, jumping out of bed, asked me if I

would take her into the country for the whole day.

We sent for Prudence, and all three set off, after Marguerite had given

Nanine orders to tell the duke that she had taken advantage of the fine

day to go into the country with Mme. Duvernoy.

Besides the presence of Mme. Duvernoy being needful on account of the

old duke, Prudence was one of those women who seem made on purpose for

days in the country. With her unchanging good-humour and her eternal

appetite, she never left a dull moment to those whom she was with, and

was perfectly happy in ordering eggs, cherries, milk, stewed rabbit,

and all the rest of the traditional lunch in the country.

We had now only to decide where we should go. It was once more Prudence

who settled the difficulty.

“Do you want to go to the real country?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, let us go to Bougival, at the Point du Jour, at Widow Arnould’s.

Armand, order an open carriage.”

An hour and a half later we were at Widow Arnould’s.

Perhaps you know the inn, which is a hotel on week days and a tea

garden on Sundays. There is a magnificent view from the garden, which

is at the height of an ordinary first floor. On the left the Aqueduct

of Marly closes in the horizon, on the right one looks across hill

after hill; the river, almost without current at that spot, unrolls

itself like a large white watered ribbon between the plain of the

Gabillons and the island of Croissy, lulled eternally by the trembling

of its high poplars and the murmur of its willows. Beyond, distinct in

the sunlight, rise little white houses, with red roofs, and

manufactories, which, at that distance, put an admirable finish to the

landscape. Beyond that, Paris in the mist! As Prudence had told us, it

was the real country, and, I must add, it was a real lunch.

It is not only out of gratitude for the happiness I owe it, but

Bougival, in spite of its horrible name, is one of the prettiest places

that it is possible to imagine. I have travelled a good deal, and seen

much grander things, but none more charming than this little village

gaily seated at the foot of the hill which protects it.

Mme. Arnould asked us if we would take a boat, and Marguerite and

Prudence accepted joyously.

People have always associated the country with love, and they have done

well; nothing affords so fine a frame for the woman whom one loves as

the blue sky, the odours, the flowers, the breeze, the shining solitude

of fields, or woods. However much one loves a woman, whatever

confidence one may have in her, whatever certainty her past may offer

us as to her future, one is always more or less jealous. If you have

been in love, you must have felt the need of isolating from this world

the being in whom you would live wholly. It seems as if, however

indifferent she may be to her surroundings, the woman whom one loves

loses something of her perfume and of her unity at the contact of men

and things. As for me, I experienced that more than most. Mine was not

an ordinary love; I was as much in love as an ordinary creature could

be, but with Marguerite Gautier; that is to say, that at Paris, at

every step, I might elbow the man who had already been her lover or who

was about to, while in the country, surrounded by people whom we had

never seen and who had no concern with us, alone with nature in the

spring-time of the year, that annual pardon, and shut off from the

noise of the city, I could hide my love, and love without shame or

fear.

The courtesan disappeared little by little. I had by me a young and

beautiful woman, whom I loved, and who loved me, and who was called

Marguerite; the past had no more reality and the future no more clouds.

The sun shone upon my mistress as it might have shone upon the purest

bride. We walked together in those charming spots which seemed to have

been made on purpose to recall the verses of Lamartine or to sing the

melodies of Scudo. Marguerite was dressed in white, she leaned on my

arm, saying over to me again under the starry sky the words she had

said to me the day before, and far off the world went on its way,

without darkening with its shadow the radiant picture of our youth and

love.

That was the dream that the hot sun brought to me that day through the

leaves of the trees, as, lying on the grass of the island on which we

had landed, I let my thought wander, free from the human links that had

bound it, gathering to itself every hope that came in its way.

Add to this that from the place where I was I could see on the shore a

charming little house of two stories, with a semicircular railing;

through the railing, in front of the house, a green lawn, smooth as

velvet, and behind the house a little wood full of mysterious retreats,

where the moss must efface each morning the pathway that had been made

the day before. Climbing flowers clung about the doorway of this

uninhabited house, mounting as high as the first story.

I looked at the house so long that I began by thinking of it as mine,

so perfectly did it embody the dream that I was dreaming; I saw

Marguerite and myself there, by day in the little wood that covered the

hillside, in the evening seated on the grass, and I asked myself if

earthly creatures had ever been so happy as we should be.

“What a pretty house!” Marguerite said to me, as she followed the

direction of my gaze and perhaps of my thought.

“Where?” asked Prudence.

“Yonder,” and Marguerite pointed to the house in question.

“Ah, delicious!” replied Prudence. “Do you like it?”

“Very much.”

“Well, tell the duke to take it for you; he would do so, I am sure.

I’ll see about it if you like.”

Marguerite looked at me, as if to ask me what I thought. My dream

vanished at the last words of Prudence, and brought me back to reality

so brutally that I was still stunned with the fall.

“Yes, yes, an excellent idea,” I stammered, not knowing what I was

saying.

“Well, I will arrange that,” said Marguerite, freeing my hand, and

interpreting my words according to her own desire. “Let us go and see

if it is to let.”

The house was empty, and to let for two thousand francs.

“Would you be happy here?” she said to me.

“Am I sure of coming here?”

“And for whom else should I bury myself here, if not for you?”

“Well, then, Marguerite, let me take it myself.”

“You are mad; not only is it unnecessary, but it would be dangerous.

You know perfectly well that I have no right to accept it save from one

man. Let me alone, big baby, and say nothing.”

“That means,” said Prudence, “that when I have two days free I will

come and spend them with you.”

We left the house, and started on our return to Paris, talking over the

new plan. I held Marguerite in my arms, and as I got down from the

carriage, I had already begun to look upon her arrangement with less

critical eyes.