Camille (La Dame aux Camilias)

"All through."

"What did you think of the two lines that I wrote in it?"

"I realized at once that the woman to whom you had given the volume

must have been quite outside the ordinary category, for I could not take

those two lines as a mere empty compliment."

"You were right. That woman was an angel. See, read this letter." And he

handed to me a paper which seemed to have been many times reread.

I opened it, and this is what it contained: "MY DEAR ARMAND:--I have received your letter. You are still good, and

I thank God for it. Yes, my friend, I am ill, and with one of those

diseases that never relent; but the interest you still take in me makes

my suffering less. I shall not live long enough, I expect, to have the

happiness of pressing the hand which has written the kind letter I have

just received; the words of it would be enough to cure me, if anything

could cure me. I shall not see you, for I am quite near death, and you

are hundreds of leagues away. My poor friend! your Marguerite of old

times is sadly changed. It is better perhaps for you not to see her

again than to see her as she is. You ask if I forgive you; oh, with all

my heart, friend, for the way you hurt me was only a way of proving the

love you had for me. I have been in bed for a month, and I think so much

of your esteem that I write every day the journal of my life, from the

moment we left each other to the moment when I shall be able to write

no longer. If the interest you take in me is real, Armand, when you come

back go and see Julie Duprat. She will give you my journal. You will

find in it the reason and the excuse for what has passed between us.

Julie is very good to me; we often talk of you together. She was there

when your letter came, and we both cried over it.

"If you had not sent me any word, I had told her to give you those

papers when you returned to France. Do not thank me for it. This daily

looking back on the only happy moments of my life does me an immense

amount of good, and if you will find in reading it some excuse for the

past. I, for my part, find a continual solace in it. I should like to

leave you something which would always remind you of me, but everything

here has been seized, and I have nothing of my own.