Here they spent three months of perfect happiness, falling more deeply in love every day; and thus wrapped up in each other's sweet presence, they lived for one another alone, and seemed oblivious of the whole world.
But such absorbing joy could not last for ever, and at length the dream was broken.
One day, on returning to the house after a few hours' absence spent in hunting, Alfred met Violetta's maid, Annina; and noticing that the girl appeared travel-stained and somewhat disturbed, he stopped to inquire the reason of her flustered state. Annina replied that she had just returned from Paris, whither she had been sent on business for her mistress; and upon being questioned further, she revealed the fact that she had been making arrangements for the sale of all Violetta's property and possessions, since the luxurious manner in which they had been living of late was expensive, and more means were needed to keep it up.
Filled with compunction that his own selfish enjoyment should have made him forgetful of such mundane but necessary matters, and horrified that Violetta should be about to make such a sacrifice on his behalf, Alfred declared that he would also go to Paris at once to settle the difficulty by paying over a large sum of money to prevent the sales; and, bidding Annina say nothing to her mistress about the matter, he set off for Paris immediately, saying that he would return in a few hours.
Violetta soon afterwards came from her room, and, entering a pretty salon that opened out on the garden, she began to look through a number of papers relating to her business affairs, and to read her letters; and amongst these latter she found a note from her most intimate friend, Flora Bervoix, requesting her presence at a masked ball that evening.
As the happy Violetta was reading this note, and laughingly reflecting that Flora would look in vain for her that evening, a stranger was ushered into the room; and upon turning to greet her visitor, she beheld a gentleman of advanced years, and of haughty, aristocratic appearance, who immediately announced that he was the father of Alfred Germont, her lover, whom, he added in the same breath, she was bringing to ruin.
Then as Violetta drew back indignantly at these words, Monsieur de Germont, though greatly impressed by her dazzling beauty and proud bearing, went on with the difficult task he had come to perform—that of persuading her to renounce his son, and leave him for ever; and in eloquent, but gentle tones, he declared that not only was she ruining Alfred's own social position as heir to one of the proudest names in France, but she was also the means of his sister's hand being refused in marriage, since her aristocratic suitor refused to enter their family whilst her brother was held in thrall by the lovely courtesan.
At first, Violetta hoped that her separation from Alfred was only desired to be a temporary one, in order that his sister's marriage might be arranged; but when she found it was required that they should never meet again, she was overcome with grief, and declared passionately that this could never be, since she could not bear to be parted from the only man she had ever loved.
Though truly grieving for the pain he was inflicting upon one so lovely, M. de Germont still continued his pleading; and he now implored Violetta to reflect upon the good deed she would be doing by renouncing a lover to whose worldly welfare she was a stumbling block, reminding her that in the years to come, when her beauty should have faded, it would be a consolation to her to remember that she had thus restored peace to one home.