The Deceiver
by
I have loved but one woman in my life, the painter D—— said one day to us.
I spent five years of perfect happiness and peaceful and fruitful tranquillity with her. I may say that to her I owe my present celebrity, so easy was work, and so spontaneous was inspiration by her side. Even when I first met her, she seemed to have been mine from time immemorial. Her beauty, her character were the realization of all my dreams. That woman never left me; she died in my house, in my arms, loving to the last. Well, when I think of her, it is with a feeling of rage. If I strive to recall her, the same as I ever saw her during those five years, in all the radiance of love, with her lithe yielding figure, the gilded pallor of her cheeks, her oriental Jewish features, regular and delicate in the soft roundness of her face, her slow speech as velvety as her glance, if I seek to embody that charming vision, it is only in order the more fiercely to cry to it: “I hate you!”
Her name was Clotilde. At the house of the mutual acquaintances where we met, she was known under the name of Madame Deloche, and was said to be the widow of a captain in the merchant service. Indeed, she appeared to have travelled a great deal. In the course of conversation, she would suddenly say: When I was at Tampico; or else: once in the harbour at Valparaiso. But apart from this, there was no trace in her manners or language of a wandering existence, nothing betrayed the disorder or precipitation of sudden departures or abrupt returns. She was a thorough Parisian, dressed in perfect good taste, without any of those bur-nooses or eccentric sarapes by which one recognizes the wives of officers and sailors who are always arrayed in travelling costume.
When I found that I loved her, my first, my only idea was to ask her in marriage. Someone spoke on my behalf. She simply replied that she would never marry again. Henceforth I avoided meeting her; and as my thoughts were too wholly absorbed and occupied by her to allow me to work, I determined to travel. I was busily engaged in preparations for my departure, when one morning, in my own apartment, in the midst of all the litter of opened drawers and scattered trunks, to my great surprise, I saw Madame Deloche enter.
“Why are you leaving?” she said softly. “Because you love me? I also love. I love you. Only (and here her voice shook a little) only, I am married.” And she told me her history.
It was a romance of love and desertion. Her husband drank, struck her! At the end of three years they had separated Her family, of whom she seemed very proud, held a high position in Paris, but ever since her marriage had refused to receive her. She was the niece of the Chief Rabbi. Her sister, the widow of a superior officer, had married for the second time a Chief Ranger of the woods and forests of Saint-Germain. As for her, ruined by her husband, she had fortunately had a very thorough education and possessed some accomplishments, by which she was able to augment her resources. She gave music lessons in various rich houses of the Chaussee d’Antin and Faubourg Saint Honore, and gained an ample livelihood.
The story was touching, although somewhat lengthy, full of the pretty repetitions, the interminable incidents that entangle feminine discourse.
Indeed she took several days to relate it. I had hired for us two, a little house in the Avenue de l’Imperatrice, standing between the silent streets and peaceful lawns. I could have spent a year listening to and looking at her, without a thought for my work. She was the first to send me back to my studio, and I could not prevent her from again taking up her lessons. I was touched by her concern for the dignity of her life. I admired the proud spirit, notwithstanding that I could not help being rather humiliated at her expressed determination to owe nothing save to her own exertions. We were therefore separated all day long, and only met in the evening in our little house.