After suffering in her own mind the struggles of remorse, after blaming Paul as the cause of her dishonesty, Madame Evangelista had decided to employ those shameful manoeuvres to cast on him the burden of her own unfaithful guardianship, considering him her victim.  But now, in a moment, she perceived that where she thought she triumphed she was about to perish, and her victim was her own daughter.  Guilty without profit, she saw herself the dupe of an honorable old man, whose respect she had doubtless lost.  Her secret conduct must have inspired the stipulation of old Mathias; and Mathias must have enlightened Paul.  Horrible reflection!  Even if he had not yet done so, as soon as that contract was signed the old wolf would surely warn his client of the dangers he had run and had now escaped, were it only to receive the praise of his sagacity.  He would put him on his guard against the wily woman who had lowered herself to this conspiracy; he would destroy the empire she had conquered over her son-in-law!  Feeble natures, once warned, turn obstinate, and are never won again.  At the first discussion of the contract she had reckoned on Paul’s weakness, and on the impossibility he would feel of breaking off a marriage so far advanced.  But now, she herself was far more tightly bound.  Three months earlier Paul had no real obstacles to prevent the rupture; now, all Bordeaux knew that the notaries had smoothed the difficulties; the banns were published; the wedding was to take place immediately; the friends of both families were at that moment arriving for the fete, and to witness the contract.  How could she postpone the marriage at this late hour?  The cause of the rupture would surely be made known; Maitre Mathias’s stern honor was too well known in Bordeaux; his word would be believed in preference to hers.  The scoffers would turn against her and against her daughter.  No, she could not break it off; she must yield!

These reflections, so cruelly sound, fell upon Madame Evangelista’s brain like a water-spout and split it.  Though she still maintained the dignity and reserve of a diplomatist, her chin was shaken by that apoplectic movement which showed the anger of Catherine the Second on the famous day when, seated on her throne and in presence of her court (very much in the present circumstances of Madame Evangelista), she was braved by the King of Sweden.  Solonet observed that play of the muscles, which revealed the birth of a mortal hatred, a lurid storm to which there was no lightning.  At this moment Madame Evangelista vowed to her son-in-law one of those unquenchable hatreds the seeds of which were left by the Moors in the atmosphere of Spain.

“Monsieur,” she said, bending to the ear of her notary, “you called that stipulation balderdash; it seems to me that nothing could have been more clear.”

“Madame, allow me—­”

“Monsieur,” she continued, paying no heed to his interruption, “if you did not perceive the effect of that entail at the time of our first conference, it is very extraordinary that it did not occur to you in the silence of your study.  This can hardly be incapacity.”