Camille (La Dame aux Camilias). Alexandre Dumas

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      “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 in deed,” 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!

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