Kamelianainen
1848
In the glittering salons of 1840s Paris, Marguerite Gautier reigns supreme: a courtesan famed for her beauty and the white camellias she never parts from. She is the mistress of counts and公爵s, a woman who sells her charm to the highest bidder, yet when true love arrives in the form of the young and idealistic Armand Duval, she discovers capacities for sacrifice she never knew she possessed. Their romance burns briefly and beautifully, but society will not tolerate such a union. When Armand's father confronts Marguerite with the stark choice between her love and Armand's future, she makes the ultimate concession, returning to the life she despises to protect a man who will never understand why she left him. Dying alone of tuberculosis, she leaves behind only her memories and the unbearable weight of her sacrifice. Based on Dumas's own heartbreak, this is a novel that aches with authenticity, a devastating portrait of love purchased at too high a price.
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“Women sometimes allow you to be unfaithful to their love; they never allow you to wound their self-esteem.””
— Alexandre Dumas
“Everything was believed except the truth.””
— Alexandre Dumas
“Her delight in the smallest things was like that of a child. There were days when she ran in the garden, like a child of ten, after a butterfly or a dragon-fly. This courtesan who had cost more money in bouquets than would have kept a whole family in comfort, would sometimes sit on the grass for an hour, examining the simple flower whose name she bore.””
— Alexandre Dumas
“We must have done something very wicked before we were born, or else we must be going to be very happy indeed when we are dead, for God to let this life have all the tortures of expiation and all the sorrows of an ordeal.””
— Alexandre Dumas
“I gave myself to you sooner than I ever did to any man, I swear to you; and do you know why? Because when you saw me spitting blood you took my hand; because you wept; because you are the only human being who has ever pitied me. I am going to say a mad thing to you: I once had a little dog who looked at me with a sad look when I coughed; that is the only creature I ever loved. When he died I cried more than when my mother died. It is true that for twelve years of her life she used to beat me. Well, I loved you all at once, as much as my dog. If men knew what they can have for a tear, they would be better loved and we should be less ruinous to them.””
— Alexandre Dumas
“One has always had a childhood, whatever one becomes.””
— Alexandre Dumas
“The child is small, and he includes the man; the brain is narrow, and it harbours thought; the eye is but a point, and it covers leagues””
— Alexandre Dumas
“ﻻ بد أننا ارتكبنا كثيرا من اﻵثام قبل أن نولد..أو أننا سننعم بالكثير من السعادة بعد أن نموت..وأﻻ ما أحتوت الحياة على كل هذا العذاب.””
— Alexandre Dumas
“Here is Christianity with its marvellous parable of the Prodigal Son to teach us indulgence and pardon. Jesus was full of love for souls wounded by the passions of men; he loved to bind up their wounds and to find in those very wounds the balm which should heal them. Thus he said to the Magdalen: "Much shall be forgiven thee because thou hast loved much," a sublimity of pardon which can only have called forth a sublime faith.Why do we make ourselves more strict than Christ? Why, holding obstinately to the opinions of the world, which hardens itself in order that it may be thought strong, do we reject, as it rejects, souls bleeding at wounds by which, like a sick man's bad blood, the evil of their past may be healed, if only a friendly hand is stretched out to lave them and set them in the convalescence of the heart?””
— Alexandre Dumas
