tidbits and pieces

[luxuryflower]

But I warn you, I want to be free to do whatever suits me, without giving you the slightest information about my life. I've been looking for a young lover for a long time, someone who isn't strong-willed, who's loving but not mistrustful, who is loved by me, but who doesn't claim that as his right. I've never been able to find one. Men, instead of being satisfied with the favors one grants them after a long courtship during which they scarcely hoped to obtain that favor even once, expect their mistress to give them a full account of her present, her past, and even her future. Once they get used to her, they want to dominate her, and they become still more insistent on getting everything they want. If I decide to take a new lover now, I want him to have three qualities that are extremely rare: He must be confident, obedient, and discreet.

If you loved me, you would let me love you in my own way; instead you continue to see in me nothing but a girl to whom luxury is indispensable, and whom you believe yourself always forced to pay for. You are ashamed to accept the proofs of my love. In spite of yourself, you intend to leave me one day, and out of delicacy you make sure your behavior is unexceptionable. Fair enough, my friend, but I had hoped for better.

Because you were the only person who ever made me feel instantly that I could think and speak freely. Everyone who clusters around girls like me analyzes our every word, trying to draw consequence for themselves from our most insignificant actions. Naturally, we don't have friends. We have selfish lovers who spend their fortunes not on us, as they say, but on their own vanity. With men like that, we have to be lighthearted when they are joyful, in fine fettle when they want to have supper, in a skeptical mood when they are. We're forbidden to have any feelings of our own, on pain of being jeered at and having our credit ruined. We no longer belong to ourselves. We are not beings, but things. We are first in men's pride, last in their esteem. We have female friends, but they are friends like Prudence, former kept women who retain a taste for extravagance that their age will no longer afford them. So they become our friends, or, really, our dining companions. Their friendship goes as far as utility, but never reaches the point of disinterestedness. They will never give you any but mercenary advice. It matters little to them if we have ten lovers or more, so long as they get a few dresses or a bracelet out of it, and can go out in our carriages from time to time, and come to the theater and sit in our boxes. They get our bouquets from the night before, and they borrow our cashmere shawls. They never render us any services, however small, without getting twice what it's worth. You saw it yourself, the night when Prudence brought me the six thousand francs I'd begger her to go ask the duke to give me. She borrowed five hundred francs from me that she'll never give back, or that she'll make up in hats that will never leave their boxes. So we cannot have - or rather, I cannot have - any happiness but one, which is, unhappy as I sometimes am, in poor health as I always am, to find a man who is of superior enough character that he will not demand a full account of my life, and will love me more for myself than for my body. I had found that man in the duke, but the duke is old, and old age can neither protect nor console. I had thought I could accept the life that he wished for me; but what do you want? I was perishing of boredom, and as long as you're going to be consumed, you might as well hurl yourself into a fire, rather than slowly suffocate from coal smoke. So, I met you, you - young, ardent, happy - and tried to make you into the man I had longed for in the middle of my noisy solitude. What I loved in you was not the man you were, but the man you might yet become. You refuse to accept this role, you reject it as unworthy of you, you are a vulgar lover. Do as the others do - pay me and let's speak of this no more.

In a relationship such as ours, if the woman is to retain any dignity, she must make every possible sacrifice rather than ask for money from her lover and cast a venal character on her love. You love me, I'm sure of it, but you don't know how slender the thread is that secures the love people have for girls like me to their hearts. Who knows? Maybe on some day of irritation or tedium you might decide you perceive in our relationship some sort of clever calculation! Prudence is a chatterbox. What need had I of those horses! It was a savings for me to sell them; I can get along just fine without them, and I no longer have to spend anything on them. As long as you love me, that's all that I ask, and you will love me just as much without horses, without cashmere, and without diamonds.

I wept silently, my friend, before all these considerations that I had pondered so many times before, and which, in the mouth of your father, took on a more serious reality. I told myself all the things that your father did not dare say to me, and that were on his lips twenty times: that I was after all nothing but a kept woman, and that, whatever justification I gave to our liaison, it would always appear calculated; that my past life gave me no right to dream of such a future, and that I had been taking on responsibilities that my habits and my reputation could not guarantee. Finally, I loved you, Armand. The fatherly way in which M. Duval spoke to me, the chaste sentiments he evoked in me, the esteem that I might win of this loyal old man, yours that I was sure to have later - all this awoke in my heart noble thoughts that opened my eyes, and sent me into reveries of saintly vanity, unknown to me until that moment. When I thought that one day this old man, who beseeched me on behalf of his son's future, would tell his daughter to add my name to her prayers, like the name of a mysterious friend, I felt transformed, and I was proud of myself. The exaltation of that moment may have exaggerated the truth of these impressions, but that is what I felt, friend, and these new sentiments quieted the advice that my memory of the happy days I spent with you had given me.

December 20.
The weather is horrible; it's snowing. I am alone at home. For three days I have had such a fever that I have been unable to write you a word. Nothing new, my friend; each day I hope vaguely for a letter from you, but it doesn't come, and no doubt it never will. Only men have the strength not to forgive. The duke has not replied to me. Prudence has resumed her visits to the pawnshop. I never stop spitting blood. Oh! I would upset you if you saw me. You are very lucky to be under a warm sky, not surrounded as I am by an icy winter that weighs down your chest. Today I got up for a little while, and through the curtains at my window I watched the life of Paris passing by, the life I thought had ended. Some faces I recognised passed by in the street, rapid, joyful, careless. Not one raised his eyes to my windows. However, some young people came by and left their names. There was a time before, when I was sick, when you - who did not know me, who had received nothing from me but an impertinence on the day I first met you - you came to get news of me every morning. Now I'm sick again. We spent six months together. I had as much love for you as the heart of a woman can hold and give, and you are far away, ad you condemn me, and no word of consolation comes from you. But it is only chance that causes this abandonment, I am sure. Because if you were in Paris, you would not leave my bedside, or my room.

January 8.
I went out yesterday in my carriage. The weather was magnificent. The Champs-Élysées was full of people. You might have said it was the first smile of the spring. Everything around me took on an air of celebration. I never suspected I could find so much joy, sweetness, and consolation in a ray of sunshine as I did yesterday. I saw nearly all the people I know, still cheerful, still busy with their pleasures. It is only the lucky who don't know their luck! Olympia passed by in an elegant carriage that M. de N. had given her. She tried to insult me with a glance. She does not know how far removed I am from such trifles. A nice boy I've known for a long time asked me if I would have supper with him, and with one of his friends who wants very much to meet me, he said. I smiled sadly, and gave him my hand, burning with fever. I've never seen a more startled expression. I went home at four o'clock. I ate with appetite enough. This outing did me good. If only I would get better! How the vision of life and happiness in others rekindles the desire to live in those who, the night before, in the solitude of their souls and the shadow of the sickroom, longed to die quickly.

February 5.
Oh! Come, Armand. I suffer terribly; I am going to die, my God. I was so sad yesterday that I longed to be anywhere but at home in the evening, which promised to be as long as the night before. The duke came in the morning. The sight of this old man whom death has forgotten seems to make me die more quickly. Despite the burning fever that consumed me, I had myself dressed and driven to the Vaudeville. Julie put rouge on me, without it I would have looked cadaverous. I went to the box where I permitted you our first encounter. The entire time I kept my eyes fixed on the stall you had occupied that night, which yesterday was occupied by some rustic type, who laughed loudly at all the foolish things the actors said. I was taken home half-dead. I coughed and spat blood all night. Today I can no longer speak; I can hardly move my arms. My God! My God! I am going to die. I am expecting it, but I can't get used to the idea that I will suffer any more than I am already suffering, and if...