Camille | Page 7

of the road. He seemed to see
the shadow of his child, and going up to her, he took her hands,
embraced and wept over her, and without even asking her who she was,
begged her to let him love in her the living image of his dead child.
Marguerite, alone at Bagneres with her maid, and not being in any fear
of compromising herself, granted the duke's request. Some people who
knew her, happening to be at Bagneres, took upon themselves to
explain Mademoiselle Gautier's true position to the duke. It was a blow
to the old man, for the resemblance with his daughter was ended in one
direction, but it was too late. She had become a necessity to his heart,
his only pretext, his only excuse, for living. He made no reproaches, he
had indeed no right to do so, but he asked her if she felt herself capable
of changing her mode of life, offering her in return for the sacrifice
every compensation that she could desire. She consented.
It must be said that Marguerite was just then very ill. The past seemed
to her sensitive nature as if it were one of the main causes of her illness,
and a sort of superstition led her to hope that God would restore to her
both health and beauty in return for her repentance and conversion. By
the end of the summer, the waters, sleep, the natural fatigue of long
walks, had indeed more or less restored her health. The duke
accompanied her to Paris, where he continued to see her as he had done
at Bagneres.
This liaison, whose motive and origin were quite unknown, caused a
great sensation, for the duke, already known for his immense fortune,
now became known for his prodigality. All this was set down to the
debauchery of a rich old man, and everything was believed except the
truth. The father's sentiment for Marguerite had, in truth, so pure a

cause that anything but a communion of hearts would have seemed to
him a kind of incest, and he had never spoken to her a word which his
daughter might not have heard.
Far be it from me to make out our heroine to be anything but what she
was. As long as she remained at Bagneres, the promise she had made to
the duke had not been hard to keep, and she had kept it; but, once back
in Paris, it seemed to her, accustomed to a life of dissipation, of balls,
of orgies, as if the solitude, only interrupted by the duke's stated visits,
would kill her with boredom, and the hot breath of her old life came
back across her head and heart.
We must add that Marguerite had returned more beautiful than she had
ever been; she was but twenty, and her malady, sleeping but not
subdued, continued to give her those feverish desires which are almost
always the result of diseases of the chest.
It was a great grief to the duke when his friends, always on the lookout
for some scandal on the part of the woman with whom, it seemed to
them, he was compromising himself, came to tell him, indeed to prove
to him, that at times when she was sure of not seeing him she received
other visits, and that these visits were often prolonged till the following
day. On being questioned, Marguerite admitted everything to the duke,
and advised him, without arriere-pensee, to concern himself with her no
longer, for she felt incapable of carrying out what she had undertaken,
and she did not wish to go on accepting benefits from a man whom she
was deceiving. The duke did not return for a week; it was all he could
do, and on the eighth day he came to beg Marguerite to let him still
visit her, promising that he would take her as she was, so long as he
might see her, and swearing that he would never utter a reproach
against her, not though he were to die of it.
This, then, was the state of things three months after Marguerite's
return; that is to say, in November or December, 1842.
Chapter 3
At one o'clock on the 16th I went to the Rue d'Antin. The voice of the

auctioneer could be heard from the outer door. The rooms were
crowded with people. There were all the celebrities of the most elegant
impropriety, furtively examined by certain great ladies who had again
seized the opportunity of the sale in order to be able to see, close at
hand, women whom they might never have another occasion of
meeting, and whom they envied perhaps in secret for their easy
pleasures. The Duchess of F. elbowed Mlle. A., one of the most
melancholy