Camille (La Dame aux Camilias)

Forgive me if I give you all these details, but you will see that they

were the cause of what was to follow. What I tell you is a true and

simple story, and I leave to it all the naivete of its details and all

the simplicity of its developments.

I realized then that as nothing in the world would make me forget my

mistress, it was needful for me to find some way of meeting the expenses

into which she drew me. Then, too, my love for her had so disturbing

an influence upon me that every moment I spent away from Marguerite was

like a year, and that I felt the need of consuming these moments in the

fire of some sort of passion, and of living them so swiftly as not to

know that I was living them.

I began by borrowing five or six thousand francs on my little capital,

and with this I took to gambling. Since gambling houses were destroyed

gambling goes on everywhere. Formerly, when one went to Frascati, one

had the chance of making a fortune; one played against money, and if

one lost, there was always the consolation of saying that one might have

gained; whereas now, except in the clubs, where there is still a certain

rigour in regard to payments, one is almost certain, the moment one

gains a considerable sum, not to receive it. You will readily understand

why. Gambling is only likely to be carried on by young people very much

in need of money and not possessing the fortune necessary for supporting

the life they lead; they gamble, then, and with this result; or else

they gain, and then those who lose serve to pay for their horses

and mistresses, which is very disagreeable. Debts are contracted,

acquaintances begun about a green table end by quarrels in which life

or honour comes to grief; and though one may be an honest man, one finds

oneself ruined by very honest men, whose only defect is that they have

not two hundred thousand francs a year.

I need not tell you of those who cheat at play, and of how one hears one

fine day of their hasty disappearance and tardy condemnation.

I flung myself into this rapid, noisy, and volcanic life, which had

formerly terrified me when I thought of it, and which had become for

me the necessary complement of my love for Marguerite. What else could I

have done?

The nights that I did not spend in the Rue d'Antin, if I had spent them

alone in my own room, I could not have slept. Jealousy would have kept

me awake, and inflamed my blood and my thoughts; while gambling gave a

new turn to the fever which would otherwise have preyed upon my heart,

and fixed it upon a passion which laid hold on me in spite of myself,

until the hour struck when I might go to my mistress. Then, and by this

I knew the violence of my love, I left the table without a moment's

hesitation, whether I was winning or losing, pitying those whom I left

behind because they would not, like me, find their real happiness in

leaving it. For the most of them, gambling was a necessity; for me, it

was a remedy. Free of Marguerite, I should have been free of gambling.