Camille (La Dame aux Camilias)

"All right, I will provide that amount."

"You will borrow it?"

"Good heavens! Why, yes!"

"A fine thing that will be to do; you will fall out with your father,

cripple your resources, and one doesn't find thirty thousand francs from

one day to another. Believe me, my dear Armand, I know women better than

you do; do not commit this folly; you will be sorry for it one day. Be

reasonable. I don't advise you to leave Marguerite, but live with her

as you did at the beginning. Let her find the means to get out of this

difficulty. The duke will come back in a little while. The Comte de

N., if she would take him, he told me yesterday even, would pay all her

debts, and give her four or five thousand francs a month. He has two

hundred thousand a year. It would be a position for her, while you

will certainly be obliged to leave her. Don't wait till you are ruined,

especially as the Comte de N. is a fool, and nothing would prevent your

still being Marguerite's lover. She would cry a little at the beginning,

but she would come to accustom herself to it, and you would thank me

one day for what you had done. Imagine that Marguerite is married, and

deceive the husband; that is all. I have already told you all this

once, only at that time it was merely advice, and now it is almost a

necessity."

What Prudence said was cruelly true.

"This is how it is," she went on, putting away the papers she had just

shown me; "women like Marguerite always foresee that some one will love

them, never that they will love; otherwise they would put aside money,

and at thirty they could afford the luxury of having a lover for

nothing. If I had only known once what I know now! In short, say nothing

to Marguerite, and bring her back to Paris. You have lived with her

alone for four or five months; that is quite enough. Shut your eyes now;

that is all that any one asks of you. At the end of a fortnight she will

take the Comte de N., and she will save up during the winter, and next

summer you will begin over again. That is how things are done, my dear

fellow!"

And Prudence appeared to be enchanted with her advice, which I refused

indignantly.

Not only my love and my dignity would not let me act thus, but I was

certain that, feeling as she did now, Marguerite would die rather than

accept another lover.