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 feminine ambitions.  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.”