Two days after, the sale was ended. It had produced 150,000 francs. The
creditors divided among them two thirds, and the family, a sister and a
grand-nephew, received the remainder.
The sister opened her eyes very wide when the lawyer wrote to her that
she had inherited 50,000 francs. The girl had not seen her sister for
six or seven years, and did not know what had become of her from the
moment when she had disappeared from home. She came up to Paris in
haste, and great was the astonishment of those who had known Marguerite
when they saw as her only heir a fine, fat country girl, who until then
had never left her village. She had made the fortune at a single
stroke, without even knowing the source of that fortune. She went back,
I heard afterward, to her countryside, greatly saddened by her sister’s
death, but with a sadness which was somewhat lightened by the
investment at four and a half per cent which she had been able to make.
All these circumstances, often repeated in Paris, the mother city of
scandal, had begun to be forgotten, and I was even little by little
forgetting the part I had taken in them, when a new incident brought to
my knowledge the whole of Marguerite’s life, and acquainted me with
such pathetic details that I was taken with the idea of writing down
the story which I now write.
The rooms, now emptied of all their furniture, had been to let for
three or four days when one morning there was a ring at my door.
My servant, or, rather, my porter, who acted as my servant, went to the
door and brought me a card, saying that the person who had given it to
him wished to see me.
I glanced at the card and there read these two words: Armand Duval.
I tried to think where I had seen the name, and remembered the first
leaf of the copy of Manon Lescaut. What could the person who had given
the book to Marguerite want of me? I gave orders to ask him in at once.
I saw a young man, blond, tall, pale, dressed in a travelling suit
which looked as if he had not changed it for some days, and had not
even taken the trouble to brush it on arriving at Paris, for it was
covered with dust.
M. Duval was deeply agitated; he made no attempt to conceal his
agitation, and it was with tears in his eyes and a trembling voice that
he said to me:
“Sir, I beg you to excuse my visit and my costume; but young people are
not very ceremonious with one another, and I was so anxious to see you
to-day that I have not even gone to the hotel to which I have sent my
luggage, and have rushed straight here, fearing that, after all, I
might miss you, early as it is.”
I begged M. Duval to sit down by the fire; he did so, and, taking his
handkerchief from his pocket, hid his face in it for a moment.
“You must be at a loss to understand,” he went on, sighing sadly, “for
what purpose an unknown visitor, at such an hour, in such a costume,
and in tears, can have come to see you. I have simply come to ask of
you a great service.”
“Speak on, sir, I am entirely at your disposal.”
“You were present at the sale of Marguerite Gautier?”
At this word the emotion, which he had got the better of for an
instant, was too much for him, and he was obliged to cover his eyes
with his hand.
“I must seem to you very absurd,” he added, “but pardon me, and believe
that I shall never forget the patience with which you have listened to
me.”
“Sir,” I answered, “if the service which I can render you is able to
lessen your trouble a little, tell me at once what I can do for you,
and you will find me only too happy to oblige you.”
M. Duval’s sorrow was sympathetic, and in spite of myself I felt the
desire of doing him a kindness. Thereupon he said to me:
“You bought something at Marguerite’s sale?”
“Yes, a book.”
“Manon Lescaut?”
“Precisely.”
“Have you the book still?”
“It is in my bedroom.”
On hearing this, Armand Duval seemed to be relieved of a great weight,
and thanked me as if I had already rendered him a service merely by
keeping the book.
I got up and went into my room to fetch the book, which I handed to
him.
“That is it indeed,” he said, looking at the inscription on the first
page and turning over the leaves; “that is it indeed,” and two big
tears fell on the pages. “Well, sir,” said he, lifting his head, and no
longer trying to hide from me that he had wept and was even then on the
point of weeping, “do you value this book very greatly?”
“Why?”
“Because I have come to ask you to give it up to me.”
“Pardon my curiosity, but was it you, then, who gave it to Marguerite
Gautier?”
“It was!”
“The book is yours, sir; take it back. I am happy to be able to hand it
over to you.”
“But,” said M. Duval with some embarrassment, “the least I can do is to
give you in return the price which you paid for it.”
“Allow me to offer it to you. The price of a single volume in a sale of
that kind is a mere nothing, and I do not remember how much I gave for
it.”
“You gave one hundred francs.”
“True,” I said, embarrassed in my turn, “how do you know?”
“It is quite simple. I hoped to reach Paris in time for the sale, and I
only managed to get here this morning. I was absolutely resolved to
have something which had belonged to her, and I hastened to the
auctioneer and asked him to allow me to see the list of the things sold
and of the buyers’ names. I saw that this volume had been bought by
you, and I decided to ask you to give it up to me, though the price you
had set upon it made me fear that you might yourself have some souvenir
in connection with the possession of the book.”
As he spoke, it was evident that he was afraid I had known Marguerite
as he had known her. I hastened to reassure him.
“I knew Mlle. Gautier only by sight,” I said; “her death made on me the
impression that the death of a pretty woman must always make on a young
man who had liked seeing her. I wished to buy something at her sale,
and I bid higher and higher for this book out of mere obstinacy and to
annoy someone else, who was equally keen to obtain it, and who seemed
to defy me to the contest. I repeat, then, that the book is yours, and
once more I beg you to accept it; do not treat me as if I were an
auctioneer, and let it be the pledge between us of a longer and more
intimate acquaintance.”
“Good,” said Armand, holding out his hand and pressing mine; “I accept,
and I shall be grateful to you all my life.”
I was very anxious to question Armand on the subject of Marguerite, for
the inscription in the book, the young man’s hurried journey, his
desire to possess the volume, piqued my curiosity; but I feared if I
questioned my visitor that I might seem to have refused his money only
in order to have the right to pry into his affairs.
It was as if he guessed my desire, for he said to me:
“Have you read the volume?”
“All through.”
“What did you think of the two lines that I wrote in it?”
“I realized at once that the woman to whom you had given the volume
must have been quite outside the ordinary category, for I could not
take those two lines as a mere empty compliment.”
“You were right. That woman was an angel. See, read this letter.” And
he handed to me a paper which seemed to have been many times reread.
I opened it, and this is what it contained:
“MY DEAR ARMAND:—I have received your letter. You are still good, and I
thank God for it. Yes, my friend, I am ill, and with one of those
diseases that never relent; but the interest you still take in me makes
my suffering less. I shall not live long enough, I expect, to have the
happiness of pressing the hand which has written the kind letter I have
just received; the words of it would be enough to cure me, if anything
could cure me. I shall not see you, for I am quite near death, and you
are hundreds of leagues away. My poor friend! your Marguerite of old
times is sadly changed. It is better perhaps for you not to see her
again than to see her as she is. You ask if I forgive you; oh, with all
my heart, friend, for the way you hurt me was only a way of proving the
love you had for me. I have been in bed for a month, and I think so
much of your esteem that I write every day the journal of my life, from
the moment we left each other to the moment when I shall be able to
write no longer. If the interest you take in me is real, Armand, when
you come back go and see Julie Duprat. She will give you my journal.
You will find in it the reason and the excuse for what has passed
between us. Julie is very good to me; we often talk of you together.
She was there when your letter came, and we both cried over it.
“If you had not sent me any word, I had told her to give you those
papers when you returned to France. Do not thank me for it. This daily
looking back on the only happy moments of my life does me an immense
amount of good, and if you will find in reading it some excuse for the
past. I, for my part, find a continual solace in it. I should like to
leave you something which would always remind you of me, but everything
here has been seized, and I have nothing of my own.
“Do you understand, my friend? I am dying, and from my bed I can hear a
man walking to and fro in the drawing-room; my creditors have put him
there to see that nothing is taken away, and that nothing remains to me
in case I do not die. I hope they will wait till the end before they
begin to sell.
“Oh, men have no pity! or rather, I am wrong, it is God who is just and
inflexible!
“And now, dear love, you will come to my sale, and you will buy
something, for if I put aside the least thing for you, they might
accuse you of embezzling seized goods.
“It is a sad life that I am leaving!
“It would be good of God to let me see you again before I die.
According to all probability, good-bye, my friend. Pardon me if I do
not write a longer letter, but those who say they are going to cure me
wear me out with bloodletting, and my hand refuses to write any more.
“MARGUERITE GAUTIER.”
The last two words were scarcely legible. I returned the letter to
Armand, who had, no doubt, read it over again in his mind while I was
reading it on paper, for he said to me as he took it:
“Who would think that a kept woman could have written that?” And,
overcome by recollections, he gazed for some time at the writing of the
letter, which he finally carried to his lips.
“And when I think,” he went on, “that she died before I could see her,
and that I shall never see her again, when I think that she did for me
what no sister would ever have done, I can not forgive myself for
having left her to die like that. Dead! Dead and thinking of me,
writing and repeating my name, poor dear Marguerite!”
And Armand, giving free outlet to his thoughts and his tears, held out
his hand to me, and continued:
“People would think it childish enough if they saw me lament like this
over a dead woman such as she; no one will ever know what I made that
woman suffer, how cruel I have been to her! how good, how resigned she
was! I thought it was I who had to forgive her, and to-day I feel
unworthy of the forgiveness which she grants me. Oh, I would give ten
years of my life to weep at her feet for an hour!”
It is always difficult to console a sorrow that is unknown to one, and
nevertheless I felt so lively a sympathy for the young man, he made me
so frankly the confidant of his distress, that I believed a word from
me would not be indifferent to him, and I said:
“Have you no parents, no friends? Hope. Go and see them; they will
console you. As for me, I can only pity you.”
“It is true,” he said, rising and walking to and fro in the room, “I am
wearying you. Pardon me, I did not reflect how little my sorrow must
mean to you, and that I am intruding upon you something which can not
and ought not to interest you at all.”
“You mistake my meaning. I am entirely at your service; only I regret
my inability to calm your distress. If my society and that of my
friends can give you any distraction, if, in short, you have need of
me, no matter in what way, I hope you will realize how much pleasure it
will give me to do anything for you.”
“Pardon, pardon,” said he; “sorrow sharpens the sensations. Let me stay
here for a few minutes longer, long enough to dry my eyes, so that the
idlers in the street may not look upon it as a curiosity to see a big
fellow like me crying. You have made me very happy by giving me this
book. I do not know how I can ever express my gratitude to you.”
“By giving me a little of your friendship,” said I, “and by telling me
the cause of your suffering. One feels better while telling what one
suffers.”
“You are right. But to-day I have too much need of tears; I can not
very well talk. One day I will tell you the whole story, and you will
see if I have reason for regretting the poor girl. And now,” he added,
rubbing his eyes for the last time, and looking at himself in the
glass, “say that you do not think me too absolutely idiotic, and allow
me to come back and see you another time.”
He cast on me a gentle and amiable look. I was near embracing him. As
for him, his eyes again began to fill with tears; he saw that I
perceived it and turned away his head.
“Come,” I said, “courage.”
“Good-bye,” he said.
And, making a desperate effort to restrain his tears, he rushed rather
than went out of the room.
I lifted the curtain of my window, and saw him get into the cabriolet
which awaited him at the door; but scarcely was he seated before he
burst into tears and hid his face in his pocket-handkerchief.