Camille (La Dame aux Camilias)

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.