The Woman of My Life

The Woman of My Life

byLudwig Bemelmans

Armand, Due de Montfort-Lamoury, a rich bachelor, is the narrator of this memoir of a starry-eyed quest for a perfect love. Retiring, amiable, and indifferent to his worldly possessions, Armand is an idealizer of women, which has kept him from becoming the Great Lover he has yearned to be. But when the novel opens, he has finally found True Love and is moved to set down the story that led up to it. Part of the setting down is done in the contemplative security of a jail cell, where he has landed because of a matter of inadvertent participation in a cafe brawl. Armand is like that — inadvertent. Things happen to him — such as the series of gorgeous young women thrown across his path by interested connivers. One by one he reviews these would-be amorous encounters, each of which ended with the gorgeous young woman united in love with someone else. There was the lovely creature whom he saved from suicide; the Comtesse for whom he smoothed the path back to her devoted but perverse husband; the tempestuous Spaniard — again, back to an erring husband; and the exquisite girl from the lower orders — a Galatea to his Pygmalion. . . then a bride to his godson. Finally, however, there is the American with her beautiful legs and her briskly managerial love — a love that is all for him. Armand has at last found the Woman of his Life.Show more