The chief, so to say fundamental, characteristic of the woman was
an amazing duplicity. She was continually deceitful every minute,
apparently apart from any necessity, as it were by instinct, by an
impulse such as makes the sparrow chirrup and the cockroach waggle
its antennae. She was deceitful with me, with the footman, with the
porter, with the tradesmen in the shops, with her acquaintances;
not one conversation, not one meeting, took place without affectation
and pretence. A man had only to come into our room--whoever it
might be, a waiter, or a baron--for her eyes, her expression, her
voice to change, even the contour of her figure was transformed.
At the very first glance at her then, you would have said there
were no more wealthy and fashionable people in Italy than we. She
never met an artist or a musician without telling him all sorts of
lies about his remarkable talent.

"You have such a talent!" she would say, in honeyed cadences, "I'm
really afraid of you. I think you must see right through people."

And all this simply in order to please, to be successful, to be
fascinating! She waked up every morning with the one thought of
"pleasing"! It was the aim and object of her life. If I had told
her that in such a house, in such a street, there lived a man who
was not attracted by her, it would have caused her real suffering.
She wanted every day to enchant, to captivate, to drive men crazy.
The fact that I was in her power and reduced to a complete nonentity
before her charms gave her the same sort of satisfaction that
visitors used to feel in tournaments. My subjection was not enough,
and at nights, stretched out like a tigress, uncovered--she was
always too hot--she would read the letters sent her by Lubkov;
he besought her to return to Russia, vowing if she did not he would
rob or murder some one to get the money to come to her. She hated
him, but his passionate, slavish letters excited her. She had an
extraordinary opinion of her own charms; she imagined that if
somewhere, in some great assembly, men could have seen how beautifully
she was made and the colour of her skin, she would have vanquished
all Italy, the whole world. Her talk of her figure, of her skin,
offended me, and observing this, she would, when she was angry, to
vex me, say all sorts of vulgar things, taunting me. One day when
we were at the summer villa of a lady of our acquaintance, and she
lost her temper, she even went so far as to say