may not have been the only motive for it. Madame Evangelista had been,
it was said, in love with a man who recovered his titles and property

under the Restoration. This man, desirous of marrying her in 1814 had
discreetly severed the connection in 1816. Madame Evangelista, to all

appearance the best-hearted woman in the world, had, in the depths of
her nature, a fearful quality, explainable only by Catherine de

Medici's device: "Odiate e aspettate"--"Hate and wait." Accustomed to
rule, having always been obeyed, she was like other royalties,

amiable, gentle, easy and pleasant in ordinary life, but terrible,
implacable, if the pride of the woman, the Spaniard, and the Casa-

Reale was touched. She never forgave. This woman believed in the power
of her hatred; she made an evil fate of it and bade it hover above her

enemy. This fatal power she employed against the man who had jilted
her. Events which seemed to prove the influence of her "jettatura"--

the casting of an evil eye--confirmed her superstitious faith in
herself. Though a minister and peer of France, this man began to ruin

himself, and soon came to total ruin. His property, his personal and
public honor were doomed to perish. At this crisis Madame Evangelista

in her brilliant equipage passed her faithless lover walking on foot
in the Champes Elysees, and crushed him with a look which flamed with

triumph. This misadventure, which occupied her mind for two years, was
the original cause of her not remarrying. Later, her pride had drawn

comparisons between the suitors who presented themselves and the
husband who had loved her so sincerely and so well.

She had thus reached, through mistaken calculations and disappointed
hopes, that period of life when women have no other part to take in

life than that of mother; a part which involves the sacrifice of
themselves to their children, the placing of their interests outside

of self upon another household,--the last refuge of human affections.
Madame Evangelista divined Paul's nature intuitively, and hid her own

from his perception. Paul was the very man she desired for a son-in-
law, for the responsible editor of her future power. He belonged,

through his mother, to the family of Maulincour, and the old Baronne
de Maulincour, the friend of the Vidame de Pamiers, was then living in

the centre of the faubourg Saint-Germain. The grandson of the
baroness, Auguste de Maulincour, held a fine position in the army.

Paul would therefore be an excellent introducer for the Evangelistas
into Parisian society. The widow had known something of the Paris of

the Empire, she now desired to shine in the Paris of the Restoration.
There alone were the elements of political fortune, the only business

in which women of the world could decently co-operate. Madame
Evangelista, compelled by her husband's affairs to reside in Bordeaux,

disliked the place. She desired a wider field, as gamblers rush to
higher stakes. For her own personal ends, therefore, she looked to

Paul as a means of destiny, she proposed to employ the resources of
her own talent and knowledge of life to advance her son-in-law, in

order to enjoy through him the delights of power. Many men are thus
made the screens of secret feminineambitions. Madame Evangelista had,

however, more than one interest, as we shall see, in laying hold of
her daughter's husband.

Paul was naturally captivated by this woman, who charmed him all the
more because she seemed to seek no influence over him. In reality she

was using her ascendancy to magnify herself, her daughter, and all her
surroundings in his eyes, for the purpose of ruling from the start the

man in whom she saw a means of gratifying her social longings. Paul,
on the other hand, began to value himself more highly when he felt

himself appreciated by the mother and daughter. He thought himself
much cleverer than he really was when he found his reflections and

sayings accepted and understood by Mademoiselle Natalie--who raised
her head and smiled in response to them--and by the mother, whose

flattery always seemed involuntary. The two women were so kind and
friendly to him, he was so sure of pleasing them, they ruled him so

delightfully by holding the thread of his self-love, that he soon
passed all his time at the hotel Evangelista.

A year after his return to Bordeaux, Comte Paul, without having
declared himself, was so attentive to Natalie that the world

considered him as courting her. Neither mother nor daughter appeared
to be thinking of marriage. Mademoiselle Evangelista preserved towards

Paul the reserve of a great lady who can make herself charming and
converse agreeably without permitting a single step into intimacy.

This reserve, so little customary among provincials, pleased Paul
immensely. Timid men are shy; sudden proposals alarm them. They

retreat from happiness when it comes with a rush, and accept
misfortune if it presents itself mildly with gentle shadows. Paul

therefore committed himself in his own mind all the more because he
saw no effort on Madame Evangelista's part to bind him. She fairly

seduced him one evening by remarking that to superior women as well as
men there came a period of life when ambition superseded all the

earlier emotions of life.
"That woman is fitted," thought Paul, as he left her, "to advance me

in diplomacy before I am even made a deputy."
If, in all the circumstances of life a man does not turn over and over

both things and ideas in order to examine them thoroughly under their
different aspects before taking action, that man is weak and

incomplete and in danger of fatal failure. At this moment Paul was an
optimist; he saw everything to advantage, and did not tell himself

than an ambitious mother-in-law might prove a tyrant. So, every
evening as he left the house, he fancied himself a married man,

allured his mind with its own thought, and slipped on the slippers of
wedlock cheerfully. In the first place, he had enjoyed his freedom too

long to regret the loss of it; he was tired of a bachelor's life,
which offered him nothing new; he now saw only its annoyances; whereas

if he thought at times of the difficulties of marriage, its pleasures,
in which lay novelty, came far more prominently before his mind.

"Marriage," he said to himself, "is agreeable" target="_blank" title="a.令人不悦的">disagreeable for people without
means, but half its troubles disappear before wealth."

Every day some favorableconsideration swelled the advantages which he
now saw in this particular alliance.

"No matter to what position I attain, Natalie will always be on the
level of her part," thought he, "and that is no small merit in a

woman. How many of the Empire men I've seen who suffered horribly
through their wives! It is a great condition of happiness not to feel

one's pride or one's vanity wounded by the companion we have chosen. A
man can never be really unhappy with a well-bred wife; she will never

make him ridiculous; such a woman is certain to be useful to him.
Natalie will receive in her own house admirably."

So thinking, he taxed his memory as to the most distinguished women of
the faubourg Saint-Germain, in order to convince himself that Natalie

could, if not eclipse them, at any rate stand among them on a footing
of perfect equality. All comparisons were to her advantage, for they

rested on his own imagination, which followed his desires. Paris would
have shown him daily other natures, young girls of other styles of

beauty and charm, and the multiplicity of impressions would have
balanced his mind; whereas in Bordeaux Natalie had no rivals, she was

the solitary flower; moreover, she appeared to him at a moment when
Paul was under the tyranny of an idea to which most men succumb at his

age.
Thus these reasons of propinquity, joined to reasons of self-love and

a real passion which had no means of satisfaction except by marriage,
led Paul on to an irrational love, which he had, however, the good

sense to keep to himself. He even endeavored to study Mademoiselle
Evangelista as a man should who desires not to compromise his future

life; for the words of his friend de Marsay did sometimes rumble in
his ears like a warning. But, in the first place, persons accustomed

to luxury have a certain indifference to it which misleads them. They
despise it, they use it; it is an instrument, and not the object of

their existence. Paul never imagined, as he observed the habits of
life of the two ladies, that they covered a gulf of ruin. Then, though

there may exist some general rules to soften the asperities of
marriage, there are none by which they can be accuratelyforeseen and

evaded. When trouble arises between two persons who have undertaken to
render life agreeable and easy to each other, it comes from the

contact of continualintimacy, which, of course, does not exist
between young people before they marry, and will never exist so long

as our present social laws and customs prevail in France. All is more
or less deception between the two young persons about to take each

other for life,--an innocent and involuntarydeception, it is true.
Each endeavors to appear in a favorable light; both take a tone and

attitude conveying a more favorable idea of their nature than they are
able to maintain in after years. Real life, like the weather, is made

up of gray and cloudy days alternating with those when the sun shines
and the fields are gay. Young people, however, exhibit fine weather

and no clouds. Later they attribute to marriage the evils inherent in
life itself; for there is in man a disposition to lay the blame of his

own misery on the persons and things that surround him.
To discover in the demeanor, or the countenance, or the words, or the