Camille | Page 5

and a certain space of time must have elapsed during these reflections,
for no one was left in the room but myself and an attendant, who,
standing near the door, was carefully watching me to see that I did not
pocket anything.
I went up to the man, to whom I was causing so much anxiety. "Sir," I
said, "can you tell me the name of the person who formerly lived
here?"
"Mademoiselle Marguerite Gautier."
I knew her by name and by sight.
"What!" I said to the attendant; "Marguerite Gautier is dead?"
"Yes, sir."
"When did she die?"
"Three weeks ago, I believe."

"And why are the rooms on view?"
"The creditors believe that it will send up the prices. People can see
beforehand the effect of the things; you see that induces them to buy."
"She was in debt, then?"
"To any extent, sir."
"But the sale will cover it?"
"And more too."
"Who will get what remains over?"
"Her family."
"She had a family?"
"It seems so."
"Thanks."
The attendant, reassured as to my intentions, touched his hat, and I
went out.
"Poor girl!" I said to myself as I returned home; "she must have had a
sad death, for, in her world, one has friends only when one is perfectly
well." And in spite of myself I began to feel melancholy over the fate
of Marguerite Gautier.
It will seem absurd to many people, but I have an unbounded sympathy
for women of this kind, and I do not think it necessary to apologize for
such sympathy.
One day, as I was going to the Prefecture for a passport, I saw in one of
the neighbouring streets a poor girl who was being marched along by
two policemen. I do not know what was the matter. All I know is that
she was weeping bitterly as she kissed an infant only a few months old,

from whom her arrest was to separate her. Since that day I have never
dared to despise a woman at first sight.
Chapter 2
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