Chapter 1

In my opinion, it is impossible to create characters until one has
spent a long time in studying men, as it is impossible to speak a
language until it has been seriously acquired. Not being old enough to
invent, I content myself with narrating, and I beg the reader to assure
himself of the truth of a story in which all the characters, with the
exception of the heroine, are still alive. Eye-witnesses of the greater
part of the facts which I have collected are to be found in Paris, and
I might call upon them to confirm me if my testimony is not enough.
And, thanks to a particular circumstance, I alone can write these
things, for I alone am able to give the final details, without which it
would have been impossible to make the story at once interesting and
complete.

This is how these details came to my knowledge. On the 12th of March,
1847, I saw in the Rue Lafitte a great yellow placard announcing a sale
of furniture and curiosities. The sale was to take place on account of
the death of the owner. The owner’s name was not mentioned, but the
sale was to be held at 9, Rue d’Antin, on the 16th, from 12 to 5. The
placard further announced that the rooms and furniture could be seen on
the 13th and 14th.

I have always been very fond of curiosities, and I made up my mind not
to miss the occasion, if not of buying some, at all events of seeing
them. Next day I called at 9, Rue d’Antin.

It was early in the day, and yet there were already a number of
visitors, both men and women, and the women, though they were dressed
in cashmere and velvet, and had their carriages waiting for them at the
door, gazed with astonishment and admiration at the luxury which they
saw before them.

I was not long in discovering the reason of this astonishment and
admiration, for, having begun to examine things a little carefully, I
discovered without difficulty that I was in the house of a kept woman.
Now, if there is one thing which women in society would like to see
(and there were society women there), it is the home of those women
whose carriages splash their own carriages day by day, who, like them,
side by side with them, have their boxes at the Opera and at the
Italiens, and who parade in Paris the opulent insolence of their
beauty, their diamonds, and their scandal.

This one was dead, so the most virtuous of women could enter even her
bedroom. Death had purified the air of this abode of splendid foulness,
and if more excuse were needed, they had the excuse that they had
merely come to a sale, they knew not whose. They had read the placards,
they wished to see what the placards had announced, and to make their
choice beforehand. What could be more natural? Yet, all the same, in
the midst of all these beautiful things, they could not help looking
about for some traces of this courtesan’s life, of which they had
heard, no doubt, strange enough stories.

Unfortunately the mystery had vanished with the goddess, and, for all
their endeavours, they discovered only what was on sale since the
owner’s decease, and nothing of what had been on sale during her
lifetime. For the rest, there were plenty of things worth buying. The
furniture was superb; there were rosewood and buhl cabinets and tables,
Sevres and Chinese vases, Saxe statuettes, satin, velvet, lace; there
was nothing lacking.

I sauntered through the rooms, following the inquisitive ladies of
distinction. They entered a room with Persian hangings, and I was just
going to enter in turn, when they came out again almost immediately,
smiling, and as if ashamed of their own curiosity. I was all the more
eager to see the room. It was the dressing-room, laid out with all the
articles of toilet, in which the dead woman’s extravagance seemed to be
seen at its height.

On a large table against the wall, a table three feet in width and six
in length, glittered all the treasures of Aucoc and Odiot. It was a
magnificent collection, and there was not one of those thousand little
things so necessary to the toilet of a woman of the kind which was not
in gold or silver. Such a collection could only have been got together
little by little, and the same lover had certainly not begun and ended
it.

Not being shocked at the sight of a kept woman’s dressing-room, I
amused myself with examining every detail, and I discovered that these
magnificently chiselled objects bore different initials and different
coronets. I looked at one after another, each recalling a separate
shame, and I said that God had been merciful to the poor child, in not
having left her to pay the ordinary penalty, but rather to die in the
midst of her beauty and luxury, before the coming of old age, the
courtesan’s first death.

Is there anything sadder in the world than the old age of vice,
especially in woman? She preserves no dignity, she inspires no
interest. The everlasting repentance, not of the evil ways followed,
but of the plans that have miscarried, the money that has been spent in
vain, is as saddening a thing as one can well meet with. I knew an aged
woman who had once been “gay,” whose only link with the past was a
daughter almost as beautiful as she herself had been. This poor
creature to whom her mother had never said, “You are my child,” except
to bid her nourish her old age as she herself had nourished her youth,
was called Louise, and, being obedient to her mother, she abandoned
herself without volition, without passion, without pleasure, as she
would have worked at any other profession that might have been taught
her.

The constant sight of dissipation, precocious dissipation, in addition
to her constant sickly state, had extinguished in her mind all the
knowledge of good and evil that God had perhaps given her, but that no
one had ever thought of developing. I shall always remember her, as she
passed along the boulevards almost every day at the same hour,
accompanied by her mother as assiduously as a real mother might have
accompanied her daughter. I was very young then, and ready to accept
for myself the easy morality of the age. I remember, however, the
contempt and disgust which awoke in me at the sight of this scandalous
chaperoning. Her face, too, was inexpressibly virginal in its
expression of innocence and of melancholy suffering. She was like a
figure of Resignation.

One day the girl’s face was transfigured. In the midst of all the
debauches mapped out by her mother, it seemed to her as if God had left
over for her one happiness. And why indeed should God, who had made her
without strength, have left her without consolation, under the
sorrowful burden of her life? One day, then, she realized that she was
to have a child, and all that remained to her of chastity leaped for
joy. The soul has strange refuges. Louise ran to tell the good news to
her mother. It is a shameful thing to speak of, but we are not telling
tales of pleasant sins; we are telling of true facts, which it would be
better, no doubt, to pass over in silence, if we did not believe that
it is needful from time to time to reveal the martyrdom of those who
are condemned without hearing, scorned without judging; shameful it is,
but this mother answered the daughter that they had already scarce
enough for two, and would certainly not have enough for three; that
such children are useless, and a lying-in is so much time lost.

Next day a midwife, of whom all we will say is that she was a friend of
the mother, visited Louise, who remained in bed for a few days, and
then got up paler and feebler than before.

Three months afterward a man took pity on her and tried to heal her,
morally and physically; but the last shock had been too violent, and
Louise died of it. The mother still lives; how? God knows.

This story returned to my mind while I looked at the silver toilet
things, and a certain space of time must have elapsed during these
reflections, for no one was left in the room but myself and an
attendant, who, standing near the door, was carefully watching me to
see that I did not pocket anything.

I went up to the man, to whom I was causing so much anxiety. “Sir,” I
said, “can you tell me the name of the person who formerly lived here?”

“Mademoiselle Marguerite Gautier.”

I knew her by name and by sight.

“What!” I said to the attendant; “Marguerite Gautier is dead?”

“Yes, sir.”

“When did she die?”

“Three weeks ago, I believe.”

“And why are the rooms on view?”

“The creditors believe that it will send up the prices. People can see
beforehand the effect of the things; you see that induces them to buy.”

“She was in debt, then?”

“To any extent, sir.”

“But the sale will cover it?”

“And more too.”

“Who will get what remains over?”

“Her family.”

“She had a family?”

“It seems so.”

“Thanks.”

The attendant, reassured as to my intentions, touched his hat, and I
went out.

“Poor girl!” I said to myself as I returned home; “she must have had a
sad death, for, in her world, one has friends only when one is
perfectly well.” And in spite of myself I began to feel melancholy over
the fate of Marguerite Gautier.

It will seem absurd to many people, but I have an unbounded sympathy
for women of this kind, and I do not think it necessary to apologize
for such sympathy.

One day, as I was going to the Prefecture for a passport, I saw in one
of the neighbouring streets a poor girl who was being marched along by
two policemen. I do not know what was the matter. All I know is that
she was weeping bitterly as she kissed an infant only a few months old,
from whom her arrest was to separate her. Since that day I have never
dared to despise a woman at first sight.