The sale was to take place on the 16th. A day's interval had been left
between the visiting days and the sale, in order to give time for taking
down the hangings, curtains, etc. I had just returned from abroad. It
was natural that I had not heard of Marguerite's death among the pieces
of news which one's friends always tell on returning after an absence.
Marguerite was a pretty woman; but though the life of such women makes
sensation enough, their death makes very little. They are suns which set
as they rose, unobserved. Their death, when they die young, is heard
of by all their lovers at the same moment, for in Paris almost all
the lovers of a well-known woman are friends. A few recollections are
exchanged, and everybody's life goes on as if the incident had never
occurred, without so much as a tear.
Nowadays, at twenty-five, tears have become so rare a thing that they
are not to be squandered indiscriminately. It is the most that can be
expected if the parents who pay for being wept over are wept over in
return for the price they pay.
As for me, though my initials did not occur on any of Marguerite's
belongings, that instinctive indulgence, that natural pity that I have
already confessed, set me thinking over her death, more perhaps than it
was worth thinking over. I remembered having often met Marguerite in the
Bois, where she went regularly every day in a little blue coupe drawn by
two magnificent bays, and I had noticed in her a distinction quite apart
from other women of her kind, a distinction which was enhanced by a
really exceptional beauty.
These unfortunate creatures whenever they go out are always accompanied
by somebody or other. As no man cares to make himself conspicuous by
being seen in their company, and as they are afraid of solitude, they
take with them either those who are not well enough off to have a
carriage, or one or another of those elegant, ancient ladies, whose
elegance is a little inexplicable, and to whom one can always go for
information in regard to the women whom they accompany.
In Marguerite's case it was quite different. She was always alone when
she drove in the Champs-Elysees, lying back in her carriage as much as
possible, dressed in furs in winter, and in summer wearing very simple
dresses; and though she often passed people whom she knew, her smile,
when she chose to smile, was seen only by them, and a duchess might
have smiled in just such a manner. She did not drive to and fro like the
others, from the Rond-Point to the end of the Champs-Elysees. She drove
straight to the Bois. There she left her carriage, walked for an hour,
returned to her carriage, and drove rapidly home.