| Marguerite Gautier was based on Marie Duplessis, a
sought-after courtesan who was dead by the age of twenty.
PRUDENCE'S SPEECH (Page 1)
"How unreasonable you are! Don't you see that Marguerite can't turn the
count out of doors? M. de G. has been with her for a long time; he has
always given her a lot of money; he still does. Marguerite spends more
than a hundred thousand francs a year; she has heaps of debts. The duke
gives her all that she asks for, but she does not always venture to ask
him for all that she is in want of. It would never do for her to
quarrel with the count, who is worth to her at least ten thousand
francs a year. Marguerite is very fond of you, my dear fellow, but your
liaison with her, in her interests and in yours,
ought not to be serious. You with your seven or eight thousand francs a
year, what could you do toward supplying all the luxuries which a girl
like that is in need of? It would not be enough to keep her carriage.
Take Marguerite for what she is, for a good, bright, pretty girl; be
her lover for a month, two months, give her flowers, sweets, boxes at
the theater; but don't get any other ideas into your head, and don't
make absurd scenes of jealousy. You know whom you have to do with;
Marguerite isn't a saint. She likes you, you are very fond of her; let
the rest alone. You amaze me when I see you so touchy; you have the
most charming mistress in Paris. She receives you in the greatest
style, she is covered with diamonds, she needn't cost you a penny,
unless you like, and you are not satisfied. My dear fellow, you ask too
much!
"Ah, my dear fellow, how old-fashioned you
are! How many of the richest and most fashionable men of the best
families I have seen quite ready to do what I advise you to do, and
without an effort, without shame, without remorse! Why, one sees it
every day. How  do you
suppose the kept women in Paris could live in the style they do, if
they had not three or four lovers at once? No single fortune, however
large, could suffice for the expenses of a woman like Marguerite. A
fortune of five hundred thousand francs a year is, in France, an
enormous fortune; well, my dear friend, five hundred thousand francs a
year would still be too little, and for this reason: a man with such an
income has a large house, horses, servants, carriages; he shoots, has
friends, often he is married, he has children, he races, gambles,
travels, and what not. All these habits are so much a part of his
position that he can not forego them without appearing to have lost all
his money, and without causing scandal. Taking it all round, with five
hundred thousand francs a year he can not give a woman more than forty
or fifty thousand francs in the year, and that is already a good deal.
Well, other lovers make up for the rest of her expenses. With
Marguerite, it is still more convenient; she has chanced by a miracle
on an old man worth ten millions, whose wife and daughter are dead; who
has only some nephews, themselves rich, and who gives her all she wants
without asking anything in return. But she can not ask him for more
than seventy thousand francs a year; and I am sure that if she did ask
for more, despite his health and the affection he has for her he would
not give it to her.
"Then, besides that," continued Prudence;
"admit that Marguerite loves you enough to give up the count or the
duke, in case one of them were to discover your liaison and to
tell her to choose between him and you, the sacrifice that she would
make for you would be enormous, you can not. deny it. What equal
sacrifice could you make for her, on your part, and when you had got
tired of her, what could you do to make up for what had been taken from
her? Nothing. You would have cut her off from the world in which her
fortune and her future were to be found; she would have given you her
best years, and she would be forgotten. Either you would be an ordinary
man, and, casting her past in her teeth, you would leave her, telling
her that you were only doing like her other lovers, and you would
abandon her to certain misery, or you would be an honest man, and,
feeling bound to keep her by you, you would bring inevitable trouble
upon yourself, for a liaison which is excusable in a young
man, is no longer excusable in a man of middle age. It becomes an
obstacle to everything; it allows neither family nor ambition, man's
second and last loves. Believe me, then, my friend, take things for
what they are worth, and do not give a kept woman the right to call
herself your creditor, no matter in what."
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