Camille (La Dame aux Camilias)

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 reassured 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 passing 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."