Chapter 3
At one o'clock on the 16th I went to the Rue d'Antin. The voice of theauctioneer could be heard from the outer door. The rooms were crowdedwith people. There were all the celebrities of the most elegantimpropriety, furtively examined by certain great ladies who had againseized the opportunity of the sale in order to be able to see, close athand, women whom they might never have another occasion of meeting, andwhom they envied perhaps in secret for their easy pleasures. The Duchessof F. elbowed Mlle. A., one of the most melancholy examples of ourmodern courtesan; the Marquis de T. hesitated over a piece of furniturethe price of which was being run high by Mme. D., the most elegant andfamous adulteress of our time; the Duke of Y., who in Madrid is supposedto be ruining himself in Paris, and in Paris to be ruining himself inMadrid, and who, as a matter of fact, never even reaches the limit ofhis income, talked with Mme. M., one of our wittiest story-tellers, whofrom time to time writes what she says and signs what she writes, whileat the same time he exchanged confidential glances with Mme. de N., afair ornament of the Champs-Elysees, almost always dressed in pinkor blue, and driving two big black horses which Tony had sold her for10,000 francs, and for which she had paid, after her fashion finally,Mlle. R., who makes by her mere talent twice what the women of the worldmake by their dot and three times as much as the others make by theiramours, had come, in spite of the cold, to make some purchases, and wasnot the least looked at among the crowd.
We might cite the initials of many more of those who found themselves,not without some mutual surprise, side by side in one room. But we fearto weary the reader. We will only add that everyone was in the highestspirits, and that many of those present had known the dead woman, andseemed quite oblivious of the fact. There was a sound of loud laughter;the auctioneers shouted at the top of their voices; the dealers who hadfilled the benches in front of the auction table tried in vain to obtainsilence, in order to transact their business in peace. Never was there anoisier or a more varied gathering.
I slipped quietly into the midst of this tumult, sad to think of whenone remembered that the poor creature whose goods were being sold to payher debts had died in the next room. Having come rather to examine thanto buy, I watched the faces of the auctioneers, noticing how theybeamed with delight whenever anything reached a price beyond theirexpectations. Honest creatures, who had speculated upon this woman'sprostitution, who had gained their hundred per cent out of her, who hadplagued with their writs the last moments of her life, and who came nowafter her death to gather in at once the fruits of their dishonourablecalculations and the interest on their shameful credit, How wise werethe ancients in having only one God for traders and robbers!
Dresses, cashmeres, jewels, were sold with incredible rapidity. Therewas nothing that I cared for, and I still waited. All at once I heard:"A volume, beautifully bound, gilt-edged, entitled Manon Lescaut. Thereis something written on the first page. Ten francs."
"Twelve," said a voice after a longish silence.
"Fifteen," I said.
Why? I did not know. Doubtless for the something written.
"Fifteen," repeated the auctioneer.
"Thirty," said the first bidder in a tone which seemed to defy furthercompetition.
It had now become a struggle. "Thirty-five," I cried in the same tone.
"Forty."
"Fifty."
"Sixty."
"A hundred."
If I had wished to make a sensation I should certainly have succeeded,for a profound silence had ensued, and people gazed at me as if to seewhat sort of a person it was, who seemed to be so determined to possessthe volume.
The accent which I had given to my last word seemed to convince myadversary; he preferred to abandon a conflict which could only haveresulted in making me pay ten times its price for the volume, and,bowing, he said very gracefully, though indeed a little late:
"I give way, sir."
Nothing more being offered, the book was assigned to me.
As I was afraid of some new fit of obstinacy, which my amour propremight have sustained somewhat better than my purse, I wrote down myname, had the book put on one side, and went out. I must have givenconsiderable food for reflection to the witnesses of this scene, whowould no doubt ask themselves what my purpose could have been in payinga hundred francs for a book which I could have had anywhere for ten, or,at the outside, fifteen.
An hour after, I sent for my purchase. On the first page was writtenin ink, in an elegant hand, an inscription on the part of the giver. Itconsisted of these words:
Manon to Marguerite.
Humility.
It was signed Armand Duval.
What was the meaning of the word Humility? Was Manon to recognise inMarguerite, in the opinion of M. Armand Duval, her superior in vice orin affection? The second interpretation seemed the more probable, forthe first would have been an impertinent piece of plain speaking whichMarguerite, whatever her opinion of herself, would never have accepted.
I went out again, and thought no more of the book until at night, when Iwas going to bed.
Manon Lescaut is a touching story. I know every detail of it, and yetwhenever I come across the volume the same sympathy always draws me toit; I open it, and for the hundredth time I live over again with theheroine of the Abbe Prevost. Now this heroine is so true to life that Ifeel as if I had known her; and thus the sort of comparison betweenher and Marguerite gave me an unusual inclination to read it, and myindulgence passed into pity, almost into a kind of love for the poorgirl to whom I owed the volume. Manon died in the desert, it is true,but in the arms of the man who loved her with the whole energy of hissoul; who, when she was dead, dug a grave for her, and watered it withhis tears, and buried his heart in it; while Marguerite, a sinner likeManon, and perhaps converted like her, had died in a sumptuous bed (itseemed, after what I had seen, the bed of her past), but in that desertof the heart, a more barren, a vaster, a more pitiless desert than thatin which Manon had found her last resting-place.
Marguerite, in fact, as I had found from some friends who knew of thelast circumstances of her life, had not a single real friend by herbedside during the two months of her long and painful agony.
Then from Manon and Marguerite my mind wandered to those whom I knew,and whom I saw singing along the way which led to just such anotherdeath. Poor souls! if it is not right to love them, is it not well topity them? You pity the blind man who has never seen the daylight, thedeaf who has never heard the harmonies of nature, the dumb who has neverfound a voice for his soul, and, under a false cloak of shame, you willnot pity this blindness of heart, this deafness of soul, this dumbnessof conscience, which sets the poor afflicted creature beside herselfand makes her, in spite of herself, incapable of seeing what is good, ofbearing the Lord, and of speaking the pure language of love and faith.
Hugo has written Marion Delorme, Musset has written Bernerette,Alexandre Dumas has written Fernande, the thinkers and poets of all timehave brought to the courtesan the offering of their pity, and at timesa great man has rehabilitated them with his love and even with his name.If I insist on this point, it is because many among those who have begunto read me will be ready to throw down a book in which they will fear tofind an apology for vice and prostitution and the author's age will dosomething, no doubt, to increase this fear. Let me undeceive thosewho think thus, and let them go on reading, if nothing but such a fearhinders them.
I am quite simply convinced of a certain principle, which is: For thewoman whose education has not taught her what is right, God almostalways opens two ways which lead thither the ways of sorrow and of love.They are hard; those who walk in them walk with bleeding feet and tornhands, but they also leave the trappings of vice upon the thorns ofthe wayside, and reach the journey's end in a nakedness which is notshameful in the sight of the Lord.
Those who meet these bold travellers ought to succour them, and to tellall that they have met them, for in so doing they point out the way. Itis not a question of setting at
the outset of life two sign-posts, onebearing the inscription "The Right Way," the other the inscription "TheWrong Way," and of saying to those who come there, "Choose." One mustneeds, like Christ, point out the ways which lead from the secondroad to the first, to those who have been easily led astray; and it isneedful that the beginning of these ways should not be too painful norappear too impenetrable.
Here is Christianity with its marvellous parable of the Prodigal Son toteach us indulgence and pardon. Jesus was full of love for souls woundedby the passions of men; he loved to bind up their wounds and to find inthose very wounds the balm which should heal them. Thus he said to theMagdalen: "Much shall be forgiven thee because thou hast loved much," asublimity of pardon which can only have called forth a sublime faith.
Why do we make ourselves more strict than Christ? Why, holdingobstinately to the opinions of the world, which hardens itself inorder that it may be thought strong, do we reject, as it rejects, soulsbleeding at wounds by which, like a sick man's bad blood, the evil oftheir past may be healed, if only a friendly hand is stretched out tolave them and set them in the convalescence of the heart?
It is to my own generation that I speak, to those for whom the theoriesof M. de Voltaire happily exist no longer, to those who, like myself,realize that humanity, for these last fifteen years, has been in one ofits most audacious moments of expansion. The science of good and evilis acquired forever; faith is refashioned, respect for sacred things hasreturned to us, and if the world has not all at once become good, it hasat least become better. The efforts of every intelligent man tend inthe same direction, and every strong will is harnessed to the sameprinciple: Be good, be young, be true! Evil is nothing but vanity, letus have the pride of good, and above all let us never despair. Do notlet us despise the woman who is neither mother, sister, maid, nor wife.Do not let us limit esteem to the family nor indulgence to egoism. Since"there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than overninety and nine just persons that need no repentance," let us give joyto heaven. Heaven will render it back to us with usury. Let us leave onour way the alms of pardon for those whom earthly desires have drivenastray, whom a divine hope shall perhaps save, and, as old women saywhen they offer you some homely remedy of their own, if it does no goodit will do no harm.
Doubtless it must seem a bold thing to attempt to deduce these grandresults out of the meagre subject that I deal with; but I am one ofthose who believe that all is in little. The child is small, and heincludes the man; the brain is narrow, and it harbours thought; the eyeis but a point, and it covers leagues.