Camille | Page 6

Bois. There she left her carriage, walked for an
hour, returned to her carriage, and drove rapidly home.
All these circumstances which I had so often witnessed came back to
my memory, and I regretted her death as one might regret the
destruction of a beautiful work of art.
It was impossible to see more charm in beauty than in that of
Marguerite. Excessively tall and thin, she had in the fullest degree the
art of repairing this oversight of Nature by the mere arrangement of the
things she wore. Her cashmere reached to the ground, and showed on
each side the large flounces of a silk dress, and the heavy muff which
she held pressed against her bosom was surrounded by such cunningly
arranged folds that the eye, however exacting, could find no fault with
the contour of the lines. Her head, a marvel, was the object of the most
coquettish care. It was small, and her mother, as Musset would say,
seemed to have made it so in order to make it with care.
Set, in an oval of indescribable grace, two black eyes, surmounted by
eyebrows of so pure a curve that it seemed as if painted; veil these eyes
with lovely lashes, which, when drooped, cast their shadow on the rosy
hue of the cheeks; trace a delicate, straight nose, the nostrils a little
open, in an ardent aspiration toward the life of the senses; design a
regular mouth, with lips parted graciously over teeth as white as milk;
colour the skin with the down of a peach that no hand has touched, and
you will have the general aspect of that charming countenance. The
hair, black as jet, waving naturally or not, was parted on the forehead in
two large folds and draped back over the head, leaving in sight just the

tip of the ears, in which there glittered two diamonds, worth four to five
thousand francs each. How it was that her ardent life had left on
Marguerite's face the virginal, almost childlike expression, which
characterized it, is a problem which we can but state, without
attempting to solve it.
Marguerite had a marvellous portrait of herself, by Vidal, the only man
whose pencil could do her justice. I had this portrait by me for a few
days after her death, and the likeness was so astonishing that it has
helped to refresh my memory in regard to some points which I might
not otherwise have remembered.
Some among the details of this chapter did not reach me until later, but
I write them here so as not to be obliged to return to them when the
story itself has begun.
Marguerite was always present at every first night, and passed every
evening either at the theatre or the ball. Whenever there was a new
piece she was certain to be seen, and she invariably had three things
with her on the ledge of her ground-floor box: her opera-glass, a bag of
sweets, and a bouquet of camellias.
For twenty-five days of the month the camellias were white, and for
five they were red; no one ever knew the reason of this change of
colour, which I mention though I can not explain it; it was noticed both
by her friends and by the habitue's of the theatres to which she most
often went. She was never seen with any flowers but camellias. At the
florist's, Madame Barjon's, she had come to be called "the Lady of the
Camellias," and the name stuck to her.
Like all those who move in a certain set in Paris, I knew that
Marguerite had lived with some of the most fashionable young men in
society, that she spoke of it openly, and that they themselves boasted of
it; so that all seemed equally pleased with one another. Nevertheless,
for about three years, after a visit to Bagnees, she was said to be living
with an old duke, a foreigner, enormously rich, who had tried to
remove her as far as possible from her former life, and, as it seemed,
entirely to her own satisfaction.

This is what I was told on the subject. In the spring of 1847 Marguerite
was so ill that the doctors ordered her to take the waters, and she went
to Bagneres. Among the invalids was the daughter of this duke; she
was not only suffering from the same complaint, but she was so like
Marguerite in appearance that they might have been taken for sisters;
the young duchess was in the last stage of consumption, and a few days
after Marguerite's arrival she died. One morning, the duke, who had
remained at Bagneres to be near the soil that had buried a part of his
heart, caught sight of Marguerite at a turn