This misadventure, occupying her mind for two years, had hindered her marrying again; and afterwards her pride constantly suggested comparisons between those who offered themselves and the husband who had loved her so truly and generously. And thus, from disappointment to hesitancy, from hope to disenchantment, she had come to an age when women have no part to fill in life but that of a mother, devoting themselves to their daughters, and transferring all their interests from themselves to the members of another household, the last investment of human affection.
Madame Evangelista quickly read Paul’s character and concealed her own. He was the very man she hoped for as a son-in-law, as the responsible editor of her influence and authority. He was related through his mother to the Maulincours; and the old Baronne de Maulincour, the friend of the Vidame de Panders, lived in the heart of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. The grandson of the Baronne, Auguste de Maulincour, had a brilliant position in society. Thus Paul would advantageously introduce the Evangelistas to the World of Paris. The widow had at rare intervals visited Paris under the Empire; she longed to shine in Paris under the Restoration. There only were the elements to be found of political success, the only form of fortune-making in which a woman of fashion can allow herself to cooperate.
Madame Evangelista, obliged by her husband’s business to live in Bordeaux, had never liked it; she had a house there, and everyone knows how many obligations fetter a woman’s life under such circumstances; but she was tired of Bordeaux, she had exhausted its resources. She wished for a wider stage, as gamblers go where the play is highest. So, for her own benefit, she dreamed of high destinies for Paul. She intended to use her own cleverness and knowledge of life for her son-in-law’s advancement, so as to enjoy the pleasures of power in his name. Many men are thus the screen of covert feminine ambitions. And, indeed, Madame Evangelista had more than one motive for wishing to govern her daughter’s husband.
Paul was, of course, captivated by the lady, all the more certainly because she seemed not to wish to influence him in any way. She used her ascendency to magnify herself, to magnify her daughter, and to give enhanced value to everything about her, so as to have the upper hand from the first with the man in whom she saw the means of continuing her aristocratic connection.
And Paul valued himself the more highly for this appreciation of the mother and daughter. He fancied himself wittier than he was, when he found that his remarks and his slightest jests were responded to by Mademoiselle Evangelista, who smiled or looked up intelligently, and by her mother, whose flattery always seemed to be involuntary. The two women were so frankly kind, he felt so sure of pleasing them, they drove him so cleverly by the guiding thread of his conceit, that, before long, he spent most of his time at their house.
Within a year of his arrival Count Paul, without having declared his intentions, was so attentive to Natalie, that he was universally understood to be courting her. Neither mother nor daughter seemed to think of marriage. Mademoiselle Evangelista did not depart from the reserve of a fine lady who knows how to be charming and converse agreeably without allowing the slightest advance towards intimacy. This self-respect, rare among provincial folks, attracted Paul greatly. Shy men are often touchy, unexpected suggestions alarm them. They flee even from happiness if it comes with much display, and are ready to accept unhappiness if it comes in a modest form, surrounded by gentle shades. Hence Paul, seeing that Madame Evangelista made no effort to entrap him, ensnared himself. The Spanish lady captivated him finally one evening by saying that at a certain age a superior woman, like a man, found that ambition took the place of the feelings of earlier years.
“That woman,” thought Paul, as he went away, “would be capable of getting me some good embassy before I could even be elected deputy.”
The man who, under any circumstances, fails to look at everything or at every idea from all sides, to examine them under all aspects, is inefficient and weak, and consequently in danger. Paul at this moment was an optimist; he saw advantages in every contingency, and never remembered that an ambitious mother-in-law may become a tyrant. So every evening as he went home he pictured himself as married, he bewitched himself, and unconsciously shod himself with the slippers of matrimony. He had enjoyed his liberty too long to regret it; he was tired of single life, which could show him nothing new, and of which he now saw only the discomforts; whereas, though the difficulties of marriage sometimes occurred to him, he far more often contemplated its pleasures; the prospect was new to him.
“Married life,” said he to himself, “is hard only on the poorer classes. Half its troubles vanish before wealth.”
So every day some hopeful suggestion added to the list of advantages which he saw in this union.
“However high I may rise in life, Natalie will always be equal to her position,” he would say to himself, “and that is no small merit in a wife. How many men of the Empire have I seen suffering torment from their wives! Is
