The Lady of the Camellias

due to be hel

g and the sale in order to give the upholsterers enough

News. Marguerite had been pretty, but the greater the commotion that attends the sensational lives of these women, the smaller the stir once they are dead. They are like those dull suns which set as they have risen: they are unremarkable. News of their death, when

sted on the first girl who comes along. The most that may be expected is that the parents and relativ

cases, the instinctive forbearance and natural pity to which I have just admi

day in a small blue brougham drawn by two magnificent bays, and I remembered having also remarked in her at that t

ear in public, they are invariably e

attended either by less fortunate associates who have no carriages of their own, or else by elderly ladies of refinement who are not the lea

possible, enveloped on winter days in a large Indian shawl and, in summer, wearing the simplest dresses. And though there were many she knew a

nd did ?all her sort. Her two horses whisked her off smartly to the Bois de Boulogne. Ther

now came back to me and I sorrowed for this girl's death much as

behold beauty more captiv

dian shawl, with its point reaching down to the ground, gave free movement on either side to the flounced panels of her silk dress, while the thick muff, which hid her hands and

ions. It was quite small and, as Musset might have said, her mot

ey cast shadows over the pink flush of the cheeks; sketch a delicate, straight, spirited nose and nostrils slightly flared in a passionate aspiration towards sensuality; draw a regular mouth

in two thick coils which vanished behind her head, just exposing the lobes of

face the virginal, even childlike expression which made it distinctive, is

pture her to the life. After her death, this portrait came into my keeping for a few days and the likenes

wn to me until some time later, but I set them down here so as not to have

ay was performed, you could be sure of seeing her there with three things which she always had with her and which

r knew the reason for this variation in colour which I mention but cannot explain, and which those w

se of this, her florist, Madame Barjon, had finally taken to calling

stress of the most fashionable young men, that she admitted the fact openly, and that they themselve

e living with just one man, an elderly foreign duke who was fabulously wealthy and had attempted to deta

have been told

red in her looks, that the doctors had ordered her to

ce so like Marguerite's that they could have been taken for sisters. The fact was that the young Duch

will remain on ground where a piece of their heart lies buried, ca

e took both her hands, embraced her tearfully and, without asking who she was, begged

d in any case having nothing to lose by comprom

emoiselle Gautier's true situation. It was a terrible blow for the old man, for any resemblance with his daughter stopped the

felt that she could change her way of life, and, in exchange for this

. Her past appeared to her to be one of the major causes of her illness, and a kind of superstition led her to

hy fatigue and sleep had almost restore

e to Paris, where he continued

, gave rise here to a great deal of talk, since the Duke, known hitherto as

put down to the salacity which is frequently found in rich old

, that anything more than a closeness of hearts would have seemed incestuous in his ey

ad not been difficult to keep, and she had kept it. But once she was back in Paris, it seemed to her, accustomed as she was to a life of dissipation, balls and even orgies, that her

that she was twenty years old and that her illness, subdued but far from conquered, continued to

an with whom he was, they said, compromising himself, called to inform him, indeed to prove to him that at those times when she could count

o concern himself with her any more, saying she did not have the strength to keep faith with the pledges she h

y, he came and implored Marguerite to take him back, promising to accept her as she was, provided

nths after Marguerite's return, th

b