Camille Part 7

Illnesses like Armand's have one fortunate thing about them: they either kill outright or are very soon overcome. A fortnight after the events which I have just related Armand was convalescent, and we had already become great friends. During the whole course of his illness I had hardly left his side.

Spring was profuse in its flowers, its leaves, its birds, its songs; and my friend's window opened gaily upon his garden, from which a reviving breath of health seemed to come to him. The doctor had allowed him to get up, and we often sat talking at the open window, at the hour when the sun is at its height, from twelve to two. I was careful not to refer to Marguerite, fearing lest the name should awaken sad recollections hidden under the apparent calm of the invalid; but Armand, on the contrary, seemed to delight in speaking of her, not as formerly, with tears in his eyes, but with a sweet smile which rea.s.sured me as to the state of his mind.

I had noticed that ever since his last visit to the cemetery, and the sight which had brought on so violent a crisis, sorrow seemed to have been overcome by sickness, and Marguerite's death no longer appeared to him under its former aspect. A kind of consolation had sprung from the certainty of which he was now fully persuaded, and in order to banish the sombre picture which often presented itself to him, he returned upon the happy recollections of his liaison with Marguerite, and seemed resolved to think of nothing else.

The body was too much weakened by the attack of fever, and even by the process of its cure, to permit him any violent emotions, and the universal joy of spring which wrapped him round carried his thoughts instinctively to images of joy. He had always obstinately refused to tell his family of the danger which he had been in, and when he was well again his father did not even know that he had been ill.

One evening we had sat at the window later than usual; the weather had been superb, and the sun sank to sleep in a twilight dazzling with gold and azure. Though we were in Paris, the verdure which surrounded us seemed to shut us off from the world, and our conversation was only now and again disturbed by the sound of a pa.s.sing vehicle.

"It was about this time of the year, on the evening of a day like this, that I first met Marguerite," said Armand to me, as if he were listening to his own thoughts rather than to what I was saying. I did not answer.

Then turning toward me, he said:

"I must tell you the whole story; you will make a book out of it; no one will believe it, but it will perhaps be interesting to do."

"You will tell me all about it later on, my friend," I said to him; "you are not strong enough yet."

"It is a warm evening, I have eaten my ration of chicken," he said to me, smiling; "I have no fever, we have nothing to do, I will tell it to you now."

"Since you really wish it, I will listen."

This is what he told me, and I have scarcely changed a word of the touching story.

Yes (Armand went on, letting his head sink back on the chair), yes, it was just such an evening as this. I had spent the day in the country with one of my friends, Gaston R--. We returned to Paris in the evening, and not knowing what to do we went to the Varietes. We went out during one of the entr'actes, and a tall woman pa.s.sed us in the corridor, to whom my friend bowed.

"Whom are you bowing to?" I asked.

"Marguerite Gautier," he said.

"She seems much changed, for I did not recognise her," I said, with an emotion that you will soon understand.

"She has been ill; the poor girl won't last long."

I remember the words as if they had been spoken to me yesterday.

I must tell you, my friend, that for two years the sight of this girl had made a strange impression on me whenever I came across her. Without knowing why, I turned pale and my heart beat violently. I have a friend who studies the occult sciences, and he would call what I experienced "the affinity of fluids"; as for me, I only know that I was fated to fall in love with Marguerite, and that I foresaw it.

It is certainly the fact that she made a very definite impression upon me, that many of my friends had noticed it and that they had been much amused when they saw who it was that made this impression upon me.

The first time I ever saw her was in the Place de la Bourse, outside Susse's; an open carriage was stationed there, and a woman dressed in white got down from it. A murmur of admiration greeted her as she entered the shop. As for me, I was rivetted to the spot from the moment she went in till the moment when she came out again. I could see her through the shop windows selecting what she had come to buy. I might have gone in, but I dared not. I did not know who she was, and I was afraid lest she should guess why I had come in and be offended.

Nevertheless, I did not think I should ever see her again.

She was elegantly dressed; she wore a muslin dress with many flounces, an Indian shawl embroidered at the corners with gold and silk flowers, a straw hat, a single bracelet, and a heavy gold chain, such as was just then beginning to be the fashion.

She returned to her carriage and drove away. One of the shopmen stood at the door looking after his elegant customer's carriage. I went up to him and asked him what was the lady's name.

"Mademoiselle Marguerite Gautier," he replied. I dared not ask him for her address, and went on my way.

The recollection of this vision, for it was really a vision, would not leave my mind like so many visions I had seen, and I looked everywhere for this royally beautiful woman in white.

A few days later there was a great performance at the Opera Comique. The first person I saw in one of the boxes was Marguerite Gautier.

The young man whom I was with recognised her immediately, for he said to me, mentioning her name: "Look at that pretty girl."

At that moment Marguerite turned her opera-gla.s.s in our direction and, seeing my friend, smiled and beckoned to him to come to her.

"I will go and say 'How do you do?' to her," he said, "and will be back in a moment."

"I could not help saying 'Happy man!'"

"Why?"

"To go and see that woman."

"Are you in love with her?"

"No," I said, flushing, for I really did not know what to say; "but I should very much like to know her."

"Come with me. I will introduce you."

"Ask her if you may."

"Really, there is no need to be particular with her; come."

What he said troubled me. I feared to discover that Marguerite was not worthy of the sentiment which I felt for her.

In a book of Alphonse Karr ent.i.tles Am Rauchen, there is a man who one evening follows a very elegant woman, with whom he had fallen in love with at first sight on account of her beauty. Only to kiss her hand he felt that he had the strength to undertake anything, the will to conquer anything, the courage to achieve anything. He scarcely dares glance at the trim ankle which she shows as she holds her dress out of the mud.

While he is dreaming of all that he would do to possess this woman, she stops at the corner of the street and asks if he will come home with her. He turns his head, crosses the street, and goes sadly back to his own house.

I recalled the story, and, having longed to suffer for this woman, I was afraid that she would accept me too promptly and give me at once what I fain would have purchased by long waiting or some great sacrifice. We men are built like that, and it is very fortunate that the imagination lends so much poetry to the senses, and that the desires of the body make thus such concession to the dreams of the soul. If any one had said to me, You shall have this woman to-night and be killed tomorrow, I would have accepted. If any one had said to me, you can be her lover for ten pounds, I would have refused. I would have cried like a child who sees the castle he has been dreaming about vanish away as he awakens from sleep.

All the same, I wished to know her; it was my only means of making up my mind about her. I therefore said to my friend that I insisted on having her permission to be introduced to her, and I wandered to and fro in the corridors, saying to myself that in a moment's time she was going to see me, and that I should not know which way to look. I tried (sublime childishness of love!) to string together the words I should say to her.

A moment after my friend returned. "She is expecting us," he said.

"Is she alone?" I asked.

"With another woman."

"There are no men?"

"No."

"Come, then."

My friend went toward the door of the theatre.

"That is not the way," I said.