Camille (La Dame aux Camilias)

"Yes; but he is an old man, and I am sure that Marguerite is not his

mistress. Then, it is all very well to accept one liaison, but not two.

Such easiness in the matter is very like calculation, and puts the man

who consents to it, even out of love, very much in the category of those

who, in a lower stage of society, make a trade of their connivance, and

a profit of their trade."

"Ah, my dear fellow, how old-fashioned you are! How many of the richest

and most fashionable men of the best families I have seen quite ready

to do what I advise you to do, and without an effort, without shame,

without remorse, Why, one sees it every day. How do you suppose the kept

women in Paris could live in the style they do, if they had not three or

four lovers at once? No single fortune, however large, could suffice

for the expenses of a woman like Marguerite. A fortune of five hundred

thousand francs a year is, in France, an enormous fortune; well, my dear

friend, five hundred thousand francs a year would still be too little,

and for this reason: a man with such an income has a large house,

horses, servants, carriages; he shoots, has friends, often he is

married, he has children, he races, gambles, travels, and what not. All

these habits are so much a part of his position that he can not forego

them without appearing to have lost all his money, and without causing

scandal. Taking it all round, with five hundred thousand francs a year

he can not give a woman more than forty or fifty thousand francs in the

year, and that is already a good deal. Well, other lovers make up for

the rest of her expenses. With Marguerite, it is still more convenient;

she has chanced by a miracle on an old man worth ten millions, whose

wife and daughter are dead; who has only some nephews, themselves rich,

and who gives her all she wants without asking anything in return. But

she can not ask him for more than seventy thousand francs a year; and

I am sure that if she did ask for more, despite his health and the

affection he has for her he would not give it to her.

"All the young men of twenty or thirty thousand francs a year at Paris,

that is to say, men who have only just enough to live on in the society

in which they mix, know perfectly well, when they are the lovers of a

woman like Marguerite, that she could not so much as pay for the rooms

she lives in and the servants who wait upon her with what they give

her. They do not say to her that they know it; they pretend not to see

anything, and when they have had enough of it they go their way. If they

have the vanity to wish to pay for everything they get ruined, like the

fools they are, and go and get killed in Africa, after leaving a hundred

thousand francs of debt in Paris. Do you think a woman is grateful

to them for it? Far from it. She declares that she has sacrificed her

position for them, and that while she was with them she was losing

money. These details seem to you shocking? Well, they are true. You are

a very nice fellow; I like you very much. I have lived with these women

for twenty years; I know what they are worth, and I don't want to see

you take the caprice that a pretty girl has for you too seriously.