Marguerite Gautier

“ Although somewhat anticipating my narrative, I will insert here an extract from a later letter of Tchaikovsky’s, in which he gives Arensky his opinion of Marguerite Gautier.
To A. Arensky.
“Maidanovo, April 2nd (14th) , 1887.
“Dear Anton Stepanovich,—I wrote to you in August that I would pronounce judgment on Marguerite Gautier as soon as I had heard the work and had leisure to study the score. I held it all the more my duty to wait because, although I value your talent very highly, I do not like your Fantasia. It is very easy to praise a man who is highly esteemed. ”

“ As a consequence, there is not a single modern play, with the exception of those of Shakespeare, the genesis of which has been so much commented upon. It is no exaggeration to say that most educated playgoers, not to mention professional students of the drama, have at some time or other expressed a wish to know something more of the real Marguerite Gautier's parentage and antecedents than is shown by Dumas, either in his play or in his novel, or than what they could gather from the partly apocryphal details given by her contemporaries. ”

“ The suggestion, such as it is, is quite frankly admitted, and an actual copy of Prévost's masterpiece figures not unimportantly in the tale. [355] Of the difference between the two, again presently.
The later editions of La Dame aux Camélias open with an "Introduction" by Jules Janin, dealing with a [Pg 370] certain Marie Duplessis—the recently living original, as we are told, of Marguerite Gautier. A good deal has been said, not by any means always approvingly, of this system of "introductions," especially to novels. ”

“ You are tired with your day's work, and are not like yourself to-night. I hear Hirzel's voice, so I will go and meet him; we are to have a walk this evening, and you can talk quietly with Jacques, but not a word about me; you know what my thoughts are now, Father."
Having thus spoken, Marguerite left the house, and after going through the garden gate, she entered a pretty lane which was abundantly blessed by Nature with a quantity of ferns and wild flowers. It was just beginning to grow dusk, and she saw not far off Jacques Gaultier and her brother. ”

“ For suddenly the mill wheel has turned round with a tremendous crash, and the brave young soldier has been hurled down! And Marguerite, what of her? With one agonized cry she rushed to the door intending to run outside to see if anything could be done for Charlie, when she came face to face with Jacques Gaultier! In an instant it all flashed on her that he must have wrought this terrible work, and, overcome by grief and horror, she sank down in a deadly faint. Bad man as he was, Jacques was really overcome at the consequences of his act, for he thought he had also killed Marguerite. ”

“ I try to hasten away but I cannot leave her. That hair of living gold, it is her mother’s hair; those violet eyes, they are her mother’s own; Oh, child of my dreams, child of my despair! I long to gather you to my arms, to steal you, to bear you away.
But a governess draws near, calls the child and leads her away: “Come, Marguerite, come along, it’s time to go home.”
And Marguerite, casting a look of sad farewell at the baby with its outstretched arms, reluctantly follows in the footsteps of a tall woman clad in black with ostrich feathers in her hat. ”

“ She rose and ran into her dressing-room.
“What is the matter with Marguerite?” asked Gaston.
“She has been laughing too much, and she is spitting blood. Oh, it is nothing; it happens to her every day. She will be back in a minute. Leave her alone. She prefers it.”
I could not stay still; and, to the consternation of Prudence and Nanine, who called to me to come back, I followed Marguerite. ”

“ The carriage stopped at No. 9, Rue d’Antin. Marguerite got out and went in alone. It was no doubt a mere chance, but the chance filled me with delight.
From that time forward, I often met Marguerite at the theatre or in the Champs-Elysées. Always there was the same gaiety in her, the same emotion in me.
At last a fortnight passed without my meeting her. I met Gaston and asked after her.
“Poor girl, she is very ill,” he answered.
“What is the matter?”
“She is consumptive, and the sort of life she leads isn’t exactly the thing to cure her. She has taken to her bed; she is dying.” ”

“ I saw only the result, I thought only of the hour when I was to see Marguerite again.
It was impossible to stay indoors. My room seemed too small to contain my happiness. I needed the whole of nature to unbosom myself.
I went out. Passing by the Rue d’Antin, I saw Marguerite’s coupé waiting for her at the door. I went toward the Champs-Elysées. I loved all the people whom I met. Love gives one a kind of goodness.
After I had been walking for an hour from the Marly horses to the Rond-Point, I saw Marguerite’s carriage in the distance ”

“ If luck is with us as we prowl along we may see—and, oh, it is indeed a vision!—our butcheress Marguerite dive into a neighbouring shop. Dive in such a connection is a poetic license, for if a description of Marguerite must begin in military phrase it must equally surely end in architectural. If on the front there were two strong salients, in the rear was a flying buttress. Marguerite—delicious irony of nomenclature—was exceedingly short, her hair was black as a raven's wing, her eyes were brown, and her cheeks, full-blown, were red as a ripe, ripe cherry. ”

“ The governess lowered the hood. Marguerite lay with her head thrown back, her eyes big with terror, and she was stretching out her arms to push aside something that we could not see. Oh, I guessed well enough what invisible hand it was. The same hand that had touched the mother was now laid upon the child. I fell on my knees. But the phantom departed and Marguerite, raising her head, lay resting peacefully. I gathered some flowers and laid them reverently beside her. She smiled. Seeing her come back to life I gave her more flowers and sang to her, endeavouring to beguile her. ”

“ How is it I am here dreaming still, as I have been ever since I rediscovered my ego on the Pont de la Concorde that evening of the lovely sunset? Transform, did I say? O God of mystery, nature, truth, if she whose name even now after four years I dare not utter, if she died in giving life to Marguerite, I should believe, I should know with the certainty of instinct, that the soul of the mother had passed into the daughter and that they are one and the same being. ”

“ You with your seven or eight thousand francs a year, what could you do toward supplying all the luxuries which a girl like that is in need of? It would not be enough to keep her carriage. Take Marguerite for what she is, for a good, bright, pretty girl; be her lover for a month, two months; give her flowers, sweets, boxes at the theatre; but don’t get any other ideas into your head, and don’t make absurd scenes of jealousy. You know whom you have to do with; Marguerite isn’t a saint. She likes you, you are very fond of her ”

“ When Mademoiselle Marguerite returned to her place beside the count’s bedside, she had calmly and irrevocably made up her mind. She would not only retain Madame Leon in her service, but she would display even greater confidence in her than before. Such a course was most repugnant to Marguerite’s loyal, truthful nature; but reason whispered to her that in fighting with villains, it is often necessary to use their weapons; and she had her honor, her life, and her future to defend. ”

“ But of course people drive a great deal and they often meet Mrs. Meredith with Marguerite in the carriage beside her. At first it was Marguerite's mother and Marguerite. Then it was Mrs. Meredith and Marguerite; and now it is Rowan and Marguerite. They drive alone and she sits with her face turned toward him—in open idolatry. She is to stay out there until she is quite well. How curiously things work around! If he ever proposes, scandal will make no difference to Marguerite. ”

“ Marguerite shuddered as she listened, clutching tight her lover’s arm. Such a promise of cruelty was in those shrill cries as made Marguerite think of the little automatic pistol in the drawer of her table as a talisman which she must henceforth carry close to her hand. She felt that even if she escaped from the peril of these days, she could never walk again in the narrow streets between the blind houses without the chill of a great fear. ”

“ Laurence and Juliette—twelve and ten—have dear faces, gentle and grave; both are blond, the elder is the more serious of the two, the younger is a shade more heedless—yet only a shade! I am well aware that Marguerite loves them better than she loves me: like so many other women, my dear wife lets herself be almost entirely conquered by maternity, and my share in her has come to be secondary. No matter! So it is and so it should be. I content myself with that part of her affection, knowing it to be warm and faithful. It is enough for me to be the keystone of that modest social edifice, a family ”

“ It is even said," he added, with a contraction of his features more like a grimace than a smile, "it is even said that he ventures to accuse me of having been the accomplice, with Madame Catharine, in poisoning his mother."
"No, no!" cried Marguerite, "my good Réné, do not believe that!"
"Oh, it is of little consequence, madame!" said the perfumer; "neither the King of Navarre nor his party is any longer to be feared!"
And he turned his back on Marguerite.
"Ah, Monsieur de Tavannes!" cried Marguerite, "one word, I beseech you!" ”

“ I will give back to Monsieur d'Alençon his kind favors and my post of gentleman, and I will go and seek death at the siege of La Rochelle, if love does not kill me before I have gone as far as that."
Marguerite listened smilingly to these charming words, watching La Mole's graceful gestures, then leaning her beautiful dreamy head on her feverish hand:
"You love me?" she asked.
"Oh, madame! more than life, more than safety, more than all; but you, you—you do not love me." ”

“ You do not accept the position, you reject it as unworthy of you; you are an ordinary lover. Do like the others; pay me, and say no more about it.”
Marguerite, tired out with this long confession, threw herself back on the sofa, and to stifle a slight cough put up her handkerchief to her lips, and from that to her eyes.
“Pardon, pardon,” I murmured. “I understood it all, but I wanted to have it from your own lips, my beloved Marguerite. Forget the rest and remember only one thing: that we belong to one another, that we are young, and that we love. Marguerite, do with me as you will ”

“ You have pierced the hearts of others, and you keep their hearts. You do more with me, you expose my head. Well, Marguerite, swear to me before the image of the God who has saved my life in this very place, swear to me, that if I die for you, as a sad presentiment tells me I shall do, swear to me that you will keep my head, which the hangman will separate from my body; and that you will sometimes press your lips to it. Swear, Marguerite, and the promise of such reward bestowed by my queen will make me silent, and, if necessary, a traitor and a coward ”

“ Marguerite, for days, even weeks past, has been looking at me with suspicion in her eyes, as though she divined my thoughts towards that lover of hers?"
"Leave all to me. Can I not have whom I like in my own house? I see that though thou may'st not dread other things, thou art well frightened at a woman's looks. Well, well, there's something in that, too."
"Yes, Father Pierre, there is; much sometimes."
"But leave looks to mind themselves now, and I will show you what to do, and where to go. You can well be in the room behind the granary, as one or two of the rafters need mending. ”

“ It was natural that I had not heard of Marguerite’s death among the pieces of news which one’s friends always tell on returning after an absence. Marguerite was a pretty woman; but though the life of such women makes sensation enough, their death makes very little. They are suns which set as they rose, unobserved. Their death, when they die young, is heard of by all their lovers at the same moment, for in Paris almost all the lovers of a well-known woman are friends. ”

“ Whatever Marguerite’s feelings are, she carefully conceals them. Insinuating, adroit, clever, gifted with a facile pen and a flattering tongue, she is too ambitious to resist, too volatile to be constant. ”

“ Taking a chair she seated herself without ceremony in the best place near the fire and in the sunlight, sure that no one would interrupt the pleasant intimacy between herself and the Queen of Navarre.
"Well," said Marguerite, with a smile, "what about our famous slaughterer?"
"My dear queen," said the duchess, "he is a mythological creature, upon my word. He is incomparable, so far as his mind is concerned, and never dries up. He makes witty remarks that would make a saint in her shrine die of laughing. In other respects he is the maddest heathen who ever walked in the skin of a Catholic! ”

“ The hair, black as jet, waving naturally or not, was parted on the forehead in two large folds and draped back over the head, leaving in sight just the tip of the ears, in which there glittered two diamonds, worth four to five thousand francs each. How it was that her ardent life had left on Marguerite’s face the virginal, almost childlike expression, which characterized it, is a problem which we can but state, without attempting to solve it.
Marguerite had a marvellous portrait of herself, by Vidal, the only man whose pencil could do her justice. ”

“ After losing her brother, Margaret remained in retirement at the convent of Tusson. She stayed there, says Brantôme, for four months, leading a most austere life and discharging the duties of abbess. She still continued in retirement on her return to Beam, mainly occupying herself with literary work. It was in 1547, subsequent to the death of Francis, that John de la Haye, her secretary, published at Lyons her Marguerites de la Marguerite, poems which she had composed at various periods, and which De la Haye probably transcribed at her dictation. ”