Marguerite, in fact, as I had found from some friends who knew of the
last circumstances of her life, had not a single real friend by her
bedside 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 another
death. Poor souls! if it is not right to love them, is it not well to
pity them? You pity the blind man who has never seen the daylight, the
deaf who has never heard the harmonies of nature, the dumb who has never
found a voice for his soul, and, under a false cloak of shame, you will
not pity this blindness of heart, this deafness of soul, this dumbness
of conscience, which sets the poor afflicted creature beside herself
and makes her, in spite of herself, incapable of seeing what is good, of
bearing 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 time
have brought to the courtesan the offering of their pity, and at times
a 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 begun
to read me will be ready to throw down a book in which they will fear to
find an apology for vice and prostitution; and the author's age will do
something, no doubt, to increase this fear. Let me undeceive those
who think thus, and let them go on reading, if nothing but such a fear
hinders them.
I am quite simply convinced of a certain principle, which is: For the
woman whose education has not taught her what is right, God almost
always 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 torn
hands, but they also leave the trappings of vice upon the thorns of
the wayside, and reach the journey's end in a nakedness which is not
shameful in the sight of the Lord.
Those who meet these bold travellers ought to succour them, and to tell
all that they have met them, for in so doing they point out the way. It
is not a question of setting at the outset of life two sign-posts, one
bearing the inscription "The Right Way," the other the inscription "The
Wrong Way," and of saying to those who come there, "Choose." One must
needs, like Christ, point out the ways which lead from the second
road to the first, to those who have been easily led astray; and it is
needful that the beginning of these ways should not be too painful nor
appear too impenetrable.