January 8.
I went out yesterday in my carriage. The weather was lovely. The Champs-Elysees was full of people. It was like the first smile of spring. Everything about me had a festal air. I never knew before that a ray of sunshine could contain so much joy, sweetness, and consolation.
I met almost all the people I knew, all happy, all absorbed in their pleasures. How many happy people don"t even know that they are happy!
Olympe pa.s.sed me in an elegant carriage that M. de N. has given her. She tried to insult me by her look. She little knows how far I am from such things now. A nice fellow, whom I have known for a long time, asked me if I would have supper with him and one of his friends, who, he said, was very anxious to make my acquaintance. I smiled sadly and gave him my hand, burning with fever. I never saw such an astonished countenance.
I came in at four, and had quite an appet.i.te for my dinner. Going out has done me good. If I were only going to get well! How the sight of the life and happiness of others gives a desire of life to those who, only the night before, in the solitude of their soul and in the shadow of their sick-room, only wanted to die soon!
January 10.
The hope of getting better was only a dream. I am back in bed again, covered with plasters which burn me. If I were to offer the body that people paid so dear for once, how much would they give, I wonder, to-day?
We must have done something very wicked before we were born, or else we must be going to be very happy indeed when we are dead, for G.o.d to let this life have all the tortures of expiation and all the sorrows of an ordeal.
January 12.
I am always ill.
The Comte de N. sent me some money yesterday. I did not keep it. I won"t take anything from that man. It is through him that you are not here.
Oh, that good time at Bougival! Where is it now?
If I come out of this room alive I will make a pilgrimage to the house we lived in together, but I will never leave it until I am dead.
Who knows if I shall write to you to-morrow?
January 25.
I have not slept for eleven nights. I am suffocated. I imagine every moment that I am going to die. The doctor has forbidden me to touch a pen. Julie Duprat, who is looking after me, lets me write these few lines to you. Will you not come back before I die? Is it all over between us forever? It seems to me as if I should get well if you came.
What would be the good of getting well?
January 28.
This morning I was awakened by a great noise. Julie, who slept in my room, ran into the dining-room. I heard men"s voices, and hers protesting against them in vain. She came back crying.
They had come to seize my things. I told her to let what they call justice have its way. The bailiff came into my room with his hat on. He opened the drawers, wrote down what he saw, and did not even seem to be aware that there was a dying woman in the bed that fortunately the charity of the law leaves me.
He said, indeed, before going, that I could appeal within nine days, but he left a man behind to keep watch. My G.o.d! what is to become of me?
This scene has made me worse than I was before. Prudence wanted to go and ask your father"s friend for money, but I would not let her.
I received your letter this morning. I was in need of it. Will my answer reach you in time? Will you ever see me again? This is a happy day, and it has made me forget all the days I have pa.s.sed for the last six weeks.
I seem as if I am better, in spite of the feeling of sadness under the impression of which I replied to you.
After all, no one is unhappy always.
When I think that it may happen to me not to die, for you to come back, for me to see the spring again, for you still to love me, and for us to begin over again our last year"s life!
Fool that I am! I can scarcely hold the pen with which I write to you of this wild dream of my heart.
Whatever happens, I loved you well, Armand, and I would have died long ago if I had not had the memory of your love to help me and a sort of vague hope of seeing you beside me again.
February 4.
The Comte de G. has returned. His mistress has been unfaithful to him.
He is very sad; he was very fond of her. He came to tell me all about it. The poor fellow is in rather a bad way as to money; all the same, he has paid my bailiff and sent away the man.
I talked to him about you, and he promised to tell you about me. I forgot that I had been his mistress, and he tried to make me forget it, too. He is a good friend.
The duke sent yesterday to inquire after me, and this morning he came to see me. I do not know how the old man still keeps alive. He remained with me three hours and did not say twenty words. Two big tears fell from his eyes when he saw how pale I was. The memory of his daughter"s death made him weep, no doubt. He will have seen her die twice. His back was bowed, his head bent toward the ground, his lips drooping, his eyes vacant. Age and sorrow weigh with a double weight on his worn-out body.
He did not reproach me. It looked as if he rejoiced secretly to see the ravages that disease had made in me. He seemed proud of being still on his feet, while I, who am still young, was broken down by suffering.
The bad weather has returned. No one comes to see me. Julie watches by me as much as she can. Prudence, to whom I can no longer give as much as I used to, begins to make excuses for not coming.
Now that I am so near death, in spite of what the doctors tell me, for I have several, which proves that I am getting worse, I am almost sorry that I listened to your father; if I had known that I should only be taking a year of your future, I could not have resisted the longing to spend that year with you, and, at least, I should have died with a friend to hold my hand. It is true that if we had lived together this year, I should not have died so soon.
G.o.d"s will be done!
February 5.
Oh, come, come, Armand! I suffer horribly; I am going to die, O G.o.d!
I was so miserable yesterday that I wanted to spend the evening, which seemed as if it were going to be as long as the last, anywhere but at home. The duke came in the morning. It seems to me as if the sight of this old man, whom death has forgotten, makes me die faster.
Despite the burning fever which devoured me, I made them dress me and take me to the Vaudeville. Julie put on some rouge for me, without which I should have looked like a corpse. I had the box where I gave you our first rendezvous. All the time I had my eyes fixed on the stall where you sat that day, though a sort of country fellow sat there, laughing loudly at all the foolish things that the actors said. I was half dead when they brought me home. I coughed and spat blood all the night.
To-day I can not speak, I can scarcely move my arm. My G.o.d! My G.o.d! I am going to die! I have been expecting it, but I can not get used to the thought of suffering more than I suffer now, and if--
After this the few characters traced by Marguerite were indecipherable, and what followed was written by Julie Duprat.
February 18.
MONSIEUR ARMAND:
Since the day that Marguerite insisted on going to the theatre she has got worse and worse. She has completely lost her voice, and now the use of her limbs.
What our poor friend suffers is impossible to say. I am not used to emotions of this kind, and I am in a state of constant fright.
How I wish you were here! She is almost always delirious; but delirious or lucid, it is always your name that she p.r.o.nounces, when she can speak a word.
The doctor tells me that she is not here for long. Since she got so ill the old duke has not returned. He told the doctor that the sight was too much for him.
Mme. Duvernoy is not behaving well. This woman, who thought she could get more money out of Marguerite, at whose expense she was living almost completely, has contracted liabilities which she can not meet, and seeing that her neighbour is no longer of use to her, she does not even come to see her. Everybody is abandoning her. M. de G., prosecuted for his debts, has had to return to London. On leaving, he sent us more money; he has done all he could, but they have returned to seize the things, and the creditors are only waiting for her to die in order to sell everything.
I wanted to use my last resources to put a stop to it, but the bailiff told me it was no use, and that there are other seizures to follow.
Since she must die, it is better to let everything go than to save it for her family, whom she has never cared to see, and who have never cared for her. You can not conceive in the midst of what gilded misery the poor thing is dying. Yesterday we had absolutely no money. Plate, jewels, shawls, everything is in p.a.w.n; the rest is sold or seized.
Marguerite is still conscious of what goes on around her, and she suffers in body, mind, and heart. Big tears trickle down her cheeks, so thin and pale that you would never recognise the face of her whom you loved so much, if you could see her. She has made me promise to write to you when she can no longer write, and I write before her. She turns her eyes toward me, but she no longer sees me; her eyes are already veiled by the coming of death; yet she smiles, and all her thoughts, all her soul are yours, I am sure.
Every time the door opens her eyes brighten, and she thinks you are going to come in; then, when she sees that it is not you, her face resumes its sorrowful expression, a cold sweat breaks out over it, and her cheek-bones flush.
February 19, midnight.