Memoirs of a Courtesan in Nineteenth-Century Paris (41 page)

‘‘I swear I shall write.’

I wrote to him, but to make him give up on this mad idea.

A few days later I had dinner with Lionel at his apartment on Rue Royale with one of his friends. Midway through the meal he tried to start a quarrel, as usual, for no reason.

‘ Once and for all,’ I said to him, ‘ for what do you reproach me?’’

‘‘I reproach you for having poisoned my heart. I hate you because . . .

I hate you, finally, because I love you.’

He left me with his friend, who said to me, ‘‘He is mad!’’

‘‘Yes, and it is a mean madness. It would be better to part than to live like this.’

And I told him what Richard had offered me.

‘‘If it is true,’ he told me skeptically, ‘‘you should not have refused, because Lionel is ruining himself ! He absolutely must marry.’



London

‘‘You know quite well that he has tried hundreds of times and that it never panned out. . . .’

‘ Because he knew you were there!’’

Lionel came back. He was sorry for his bad mood and did his best to make me forget it.

I received a letter from Richard. In spite of what I had written, he repeated his offer.

Acting was boring me! . . . To be an actor, one needs a stable life. It is difficult to be cheerful on the stage, to sing, to dance, to make others laugh when one’s heart is sad.

To prevail on my skepticism, Didier continued to exercise a magnetic influence over me, which was tiresome!

One day that Lionel had Montji to dinner, he started a quarrel with me again. The scene became so terrible that I blurted out my secret.

‘After all, my dear friend, do you think that I need you? Do you think that outside your door I shall not find a friend who will extend his hand to me? Well . . . I was asked in marriage and offered forty thousand francs if I would leave you. I wish I did not have to tell you, but this life is hell! It would be better to leave you for good. . . .’

‘‘Bravo!’’ he said, bursting out laughing. ‘‘What great acting, what imaginative blackmail. Oh! So someone wants to marry you? You are telling me how much you have been offered so I shall keep you at the same price! Well! I urge you to accept.’

I left exasperated, swearing that I would never see him again, and determined to go away. I went to the theater and begged M. Mouriez to grant me a short leave. He gave it to me.

I went home. I was handed this letter from Lionel: When one loves a woman unworthy of oneself and one feels too weak to leave her, one becomes deaf and blind, as I should have been. The heart of a girl like you is like a disreputable inn. The honest wayfarer who inadvertently enters endures the sneers of the regular guests. You say that I have not loved you, but the love I have had for you is my only excuse. Your fake love, however, began with a caress and ended with a price. I am not rich enough. You are free.

Lionel

I picked up a pen and wrote Richard. My maid announced his arrival.

I asked him, ‘‘When are we leaving?’’

‘ Tomorrow night, if you wish. You will need your mother’s consent, and I would like for you to deposit this money before your departure.’



London

On my toiletry bag, he set a wallet, which I returned to him.

‘ No; I do not want this money.’

‘‘I want you to deposit it before we leave Paris. It will help you rear your little girl. Whatever happens, these forty thousand francs are yours.’

      !

I almost fainted when the train took me away. My rebellious heart was bleeding at the thought that it was leaving Lionel.

During my first stroll I hated London. The fog blocked the daylight and parted only to release a black snow that stained my white hat and flecked my face. I went back inside, furious. I wanted to wash with soap and water; I looked like a chimney sweep. It had spread. I managed to clean my face with cold cream. After that I went out only by carriage. I visited all the monuments. One thing surprised me: one had to pay at all entrances and exits and give I do not know how many shillings to see a few jewels in a glass case. I was sad and bored. Richard did not know what to invent to distract me.

He had prepared everything for our wedding. The moment was approaching, not without giving me great fright because I doubted myself and my determination. It was worse after I went to the post office and found a letter from Lionel. He had contacted my maid, and in spite of my orders she told him where I was and how he could write to me. This is what he wrote me:

If you receive another letter from me, do not believe that I hope for a reconciliation between us. There is now a barrier I shall never cross. With you, Céleste, I have had nothing but suffering! I have suffered for the past, I have suffered for the present, I shall suffer all my life. For you to marry this man is sheer madness! . . . Once the whim has passed, all you will have left are regrets and bitterness.

You have reproached me for letters and words induced by anger; they hurt you because you did not know how to find in them what they held of passion and despair. The woman who loves would like to be the last one in the whole world, to owe everything to the one she loves and to be proud of it. You were like that when you loved me. . . .

Forgive me for disturbing you amid your joys and pleasures.

Adieu.

Lionel

After reading this, I cried. Yet I was happy; this letter proved to me that he still loved me.



London

The forms to fill out for our wedding were done. Richard told me,

‘ Céleste, today you will be my wife, and I can give you no greater proof of my love for you.’

In London he had ordered a complete outfit for me. . . . Mechanically, I got dressed. . . . I was afraid to say anything. . . . I did not want to get married!

I had a pearl gray brocade dress, a black lace shawl, and a white hat.

‘ This outfit,’ I told him, ‘‘is terribly gloomy!’’

On my hat he placed a veil that had been made for the queen and that he had bought the day before.

I let myself be led away, but when the carriage stopped I regained vitality and vigor.

‘‘No, no,’ I told the coachman, ‘ do not stop, keep going! . . . Richard, tell him to go past this door, I must speak to you.’

I sat back in the carriage and held on to the cushion as if I were being forced to get out.

He gave orders to return to the hotel. Once back in our apartment, he showed me to a chair, sat down, and asked, ‘‘Now, Céleste, what do you have to say to me?’’

He was saying this so sweetly and was looking at me with such kind eyes, that I did not know what to reply. I was shaking and my teeth were chattering.

‘‘You were just frightened by what you were going to promise me. . . .

You do not love me and you do not have the courage to give me your whole life. You do not love me and you will never love me. I shall destroy my love or it will destroy me!’’

He hid his face in his hands to cry. I threw myself on my knees.

‘‘Richard, you should have nothing but contempt for me; I am not worthy of a love like yours. . . . Send me away; I am a wretch!’

He remained silent for a few moments, then, looking at me with anger, he said, ‘‘How you love this man!’’

The rest of the time was spent in silence. We left the next day with much different feelings in our hearts.

Once back in Paris, he went to a hotel, Cité Bergère, because he had had his apartment sold during our absence.

I received another letter from Lionel:

    

  

I forgive you all the pain you have caused me. What! . . . When I tell you that I love you, that I am suffering, you do not find in your heart the echo



London

of a memory! Céleste, it is evil to be ungrateful. You cannot forgive me a moment of wrath. If you only knew, however, how much love, tenderness, passion were in my kisses! How these kisses originated deep inside my heart! So it is over, I shall never see you again. . . . I am going to leave, to go far away! . . . Come see me, at least to say adieu; I have never hurt you. Do not abandon me thus; I love you. . . . Come back, and you will have more than you could have dreamed of! I cannot live without you. . . .

Come, come, my heart is calling out to you. I am sick in bed. . . . Would you refuse a bit of pity to a man whose only crime is to have loved you too much?

The next day, there were races at the Champ-de-Mars. . . . I had my barouche harnessed. On my way down I found my carriage filled with roses. . . . I thought it was a gallant gesture from Richard, and I left carrying a short note I wanted to personally bring to Lionel’s house, in which I said:

You love me today, because I belong to another; if he were not around anymore, you would not bend over to pick me off the floor. I warned you!

You know that I love you, and you teased me and taunted me. I left. . . .

I made three people unhappy. I shall be admired. . . . I am on the same level as these women I used to despise. Horses, carriages—with all that, there is no need for a heart. . . .

All the reproaches you level at me I throw back at you. . . . Is my heart not a disreputable inn? . . . I throw you out of it to spare your being in such bad company.

I gave this letter to a delivery boy. . . . I could not rely on my courage to hand it over myself.



31

o UnfortunateEncounter

The Little House in the Forest—Maria, the Polka Dancer, Clara Fontaine, and Other Celebrities—

The Lace War Starts Up Again

  , at ten o’clock, the doctor who had taken care of me when I lived at Place de la Madeleine, and whom Lionel still saw, asked to speak to me.

After coldly greeting me, he said, ‘ Strange as my endeavor might seem, rest assured, mademoiselle, that this visit is of my own choice.

I just came from the house of M. le Comte de C

. I have been to

see him four times since yesterday at six o’clock. I have bled him twice; blood is choking him and he is delirious. His personal valet told me that last night twenty times he asked that you be brought to him. No one dared do it. I have come to plead with you to go see him, even for just one hour.’

When I arrived at his house on Rue Royale, the servants were running right and left. He had just suffered a terrible seizure. I went to his bedside. He looked at me for two or three minutes, then grabbing my wrist, he said, ‘ Oh! It is you. Come nearer so I can see what a woman who can cause so much pain looks like. What magic did you use to seduce me, daughter of Satan?’’

He let go and placed his hands on his forehead. His shirt became stained with black blood. I rang and the doctor rebandaged his arm after bleeding him again.

As a result, Lionel seemed calmer. He told me, ‘ So, there you are! I am glad you came. Where were you? It seems like I have not seen you in a long time.’

He spoke of this and that, then fell asleep. The doctor told me as he was leaving, ‘‘Do not leave him. I shall return tomorrow early.’



     

When I was alone with the silence and my patient, I sat at a table where there was writing material and I began a letter to Richard: My friend, I am not worthy of your love! It is with my head bowed that I ask your forgiveness for the pain I am going to cause you again. Forget me, I am an ingrate, unworthy of you. Louise, my maid, will hand you this money, which I cannot keep. Do not try to see me. Lionel is in critical condition; I am at his bedside, and I shall not leave his room until he is out of danger. Adieu! A bit of courage will spare you a life of regrets.

Forgive me!

I spent a week without leaving Lionel. Illness had not changed his personality. He would become furious with me for no reason, sometimes ringing his servant so he would not have to ask me to hand him the herbal tea that was right next to me. He would say that my presence distressed him. When I cried without replying, he would fervently ask my forgiveness, kissing my hands and saying, ‘‘I love you more than my life. If I could not see you anymore, I would go mad!’’

After a few days he recovered. He let me go home where I found four letters from Richard, all sweet and full of regrets.

My mother came to see me. After I made her promise she would not see Vincent anymore, I told her that I would buy her a tobacco shop or a lodging house. Three days later I got her settled on Rue de Cléry at the hôtel of that same name.

Three months went by. Lionel was terribly sad. He was kind, but he could not get my trip to London out of his mind. A simple handkerchief or a mere word would serve as reminders. Richard was still away with relatives. I dreaded his return. My only quarrel with Lionel was over the gifts he kept giving me.

One day one of Lionel’s relatives came to see me. He was a fat, jolly man. Even though he made a great display of his interest in Lionel, he would not have given him twenty-five louis. But he was generous . . .

with advice.

‘‘Now,’ he told me, ‘‘you love Lionel and you are letting him go broke like an idiot! Tell him he should get married! What will you do with him when he has not a single farthing left?’’

That evening I spoke to Lionel about his future. I told him, ‘‘I fear for you. If you wished to marry, I would not be angry with you. If my presence were an inconvenience for you, I would leave Paris. We would go from this great love to friendship that always endures.’



Unfortunate Encounter

‘‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘ but I want to see you, to have you near me in the future. We shall leave for Berry and we shall buy a little house where you will put everything that belongs to you and is now at my house in the country.’

We agreed, and we left a few days later. We found a darling little house whose yard is adjacent to the forest. Lionel took it upon himself to arrange everything at my retreat, and I returned to Paris.

Once there, I went to see my mother. Her brightest idea had been to rent the first floor apartment to M. Vincent. I became so angry that I threw them both out. I resold the house almost immediately.