The Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas (fils)

cannot forgive myself for having let her die like this.
    â€œDead! Dead! And while thinking of me, while writing and speaking my name, poor, dear Marguerite!”
    Armand, letting his thoughts and his tears flow freely, gave me his hand and continued, “Anyone who saw me here mourning a death like this one in this way would think I was a child; but it is because nobody knows how I made this woman suffer, how cruel I was, how good she was and how submissive. I had thought that it was for me to forgive her, but today I consider myself unworthy of the forgiveness she granted me. Oh! I would give ten years of my life to weep one hour at her feet.”
    It is always difficult to console someone for a pain one does not oneself know, but I felt such an active sympathy for this young man who so openly made me the confidant of his sorrows that I believed my words would not be indifferent to him, and I said, “Do you not have relatives, or friends? Take heart; go to them and they will console you. As for me, all I can do is pity you.”
    â€œIt’s true,” he said, as he got up and began pacing around my room. “I am boring you. Excuse me, I had forgotten that my pain could mean but little to you, and that I am importuning you about something that couldn’t and shouldn’t interest you at all.”
    â€œYou mistake my meaning. I am entirely at your service; it is just that I regret my inability to ease your heartache. If my company and the company of my friends can distract you, if, in short, there is anything at all you need from me, I want you to know the great pleasure I will take in being helpful to you.”
    â€œExcuse me, excuse me,” he said. “Pain intensifies the emotions. Let me stay here a few minutes more; I need time to dry my eyes so people on the street won’t stare at me like I’m an oddity, a grown man crying like a baby. You have made me very happy by giving me this book; I will never know how to repay you.”
    â€œBy according me a little of your friendship,” I told Armand, “and by telling me the cause of your heartache. It’s consoling to talk about what one suffers.”
    â€œYou are right; but today I am overcome by the need to cry, and if I spoke with you, it would be nothing but words without end. One day I will share this story with you, and you will see if I am right to feel sorry for the poor girl. And now,” he added, rubbing his eyes one last time and looking at himself in the mirror, “tell me that you don’t find me too inane, and permit me to come back and see you another time.”
    The man’s expression was so good and mild; I nearly hugged him.
    As for him, his eyes began again to cloud over with tears; he saw that I noticed, and averted his gaze.
    â€œWell then,” I said to him. “Courage.”
    â€œGood-bye,” he said.
    And making an extraordinary effort to keep from crying, he left my home, not so much leaving as fleeing.
    I raised the curtain by my window and watched him board the carriage that awaited him at the door; he was scarcely inside before he dissolved into tears and hid his face in his handkerchief.

CHAPTER V
    A fairly long time passed before I heard talk of Armand, but the subject of Marguerite, on the other hand, came up quite often.
    I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but once the name of someone who is supposed to be unknown to you, or at least indifferent to you, is spoken before you, details begin to cluster around this name, little by little, and you begin to hear your friends speak of things they had never before discussed with you. It is then you discover that this person was practically connected to you, that she had passed unobserved through your life many times; you find coincidences in events people relate that seem to have an actual connection with events in your own life. I had positively never known Marguerite, though I had seen her, bumped into her,