I thought
her better than she really was. She had great faults; I must know her
longer and find them out; I must compare her with other women--women
younger, simpler, more innocent, more ignorant; and then if I still did
her the honour to think well of her, she would listen to me again. I
told her that I was not afraid of preferring any woman in the world to
her, and then she repeated, 'Happy man, happy man! you are in love, you
are in love!'"

I called upon Madame Blumenthal a couple of days later, in some agitation
of thought. It has been proved that there are, here and there, in the
world, such people as sincere impostors; certain characters who cultivate
fictitious emotions in perfect good faith. Even if this clever lady
enjoyed poor Pickering's bedazzlement, it was conceivable that, taking
vanity and charity together, she should care more for his welfare than
for her own entertainment; and her offer to abide by the result of
hazardous comparison with other women was a finer stroke than her
reputation had led me to expect. She received me in a shabby little
sitting-room littered with uncut books and newspapers, many of which I
saw at a glance were French. One side of it was occupied by an open
piano, surmounted by a jar full of white roses. They perfumed the air;
they seemed to me to exhale the pure aroma of Pickering's devotion.
Buried in an arm-chair, the object of this devotion was reading the
_Revue des Deux Mondes_. The purpose of my visit was not to admire
Madame Blumenthal on my own account, but to ascertain how far I might
safely leave her to work her will upon my friend. She had impugned my
sincerity the evening of the opera, and I was careful on this occasion to
abstain from compliments, and not to place her on her guard against my
penetration. It is needless to narrate our interview in detail; indeed,
to tell the perfect truth, I was punished for my rash attempt to surprise
her by a temporary eclipse of my own perspicacity. She sat there so
questioning, so perceptive, so genial, so generous, and so pretty withal,
that I was quite ready at the end of half an hour to subscribe to the
most comprehensive of Pickering's rhapsodies. She was certainly a
wonderful woman. I have never liked to linger, in memory, on that half-
hour. The result of it was to prove that there were many more things in
the composition of a woman who, as Niedermeyer said, had lodged her
imagination in the place of her heart