Camille (La Dame aux Camilias)

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 bearing, 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.