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