Camille (La Dame aux Camilias)

When I reached home I began to cry like a child. There is no man to whom

a woman has not been unfaithful, once at least, and who will not know

what I suffered.

I said to myself, under the weight of these feverish resolutions which

one always feels as if one had the force to carry out, that I must break

with my amour at once, and I waited impatiently for daylight in order

to set out forthwith to rejoin my father and my sister, of whose love at

least I was certain, and certain that that love would never be betrayed.

However, I did not wish to go away without letting Marguerite know why

I went. Only a man who really cares no more for his mistress leaves her

without writing to her. I made and remade twenty letters in my head. I

had had to do with a woman like all other women of the kind. I had been

poetizing too much. She had treated me like a school-boy, she had used

in deceiving me a trick which was insultingly simple. My self-esteem

got the upper hand. I must leave this woman without giving her the

satisfaction of knowing that she had made me suffer, and this is what I

wrote to her in my most elegant handwriting and with tears of rage and

sorrow in my eyes: "MY DEAR MARGUERITE: I hope that your indisposition yesterday was not

serious. I came, at eleven at night, to ask after you, and was told

that you had not come in. M. de G. was more fortunate, for he presented

himself shortly afterward, and at four in the morning he had not left.

"Forgive me for the few tedious hours that I have given you, and be

assured that I shall never forget the happy moments which I owe to you.

"I should have called to-day to ask after you, but I intend going back

to my father's.

"Good-bye, my dear Marguerite. I am not rich enough to love you as I

would nor poor enough to love you as you would. Let us then forget, you

a name which must be indifferent enough to you, I a happiness which has

become impossible.

"I send back your key, which I have never used, and which might be

useful to you, if you are often ill as you were yesterday."

As you will see, I was unable to end my letter without a touch of

impertinent irony, which proved how much in love I still was.

I read and reread this letter ten times over; then the thought of the

pain it would give to Marguerite calmed me a little. I tried to persuade

myself of the feelings which it professed; and when my servant came to

my room at eight o'clock, I gave it to him and told him to take it at

once.