ly touched and affected, shaking
hands all round, and accepting, he too, his share of sympathy. "What
genius! what genius!" he repeated as he mopped his eyes. It was at the
same time ridiculous and affecting.

[Illustration: p174-185]

[Illustration: p177-188]

THE DECEIVER.

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.

[Illustration: p179-190]

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, i