The Marriage Contract | Page 7

time he first returned to the provinces
he had been secretly in love with the queen of Bordeaux, the great
beauty, Mademoiselle Evangelista.
About the beginning of the century, a rich Spaniard, named Evangelista,
established himself in Bordeaux, where his letters of recommendation,
as well as his large fortune, gave him an entrance to the salons of the
nobility. His wife contributed greatly to maintain him in the good
graces of an aristocracy which may perhaps have adopted him in the
first instance merely to pique the society of the class below them.
Madame Evangelista, who belonged to the Casa-Reale, an illustrious
family of Spain, was a Creole, and, like all women served by slaves,
she lived as a great lady, knew nothing of the value of money,
repressed no whims, even the most expensive, finding them ever
satisfied by an adoring husband who generously concealed from her
knowledge the running-gear of the financial machine. Happy in finding
her pleased with Bordeaux, where his interests obliged him to live, the
Spaniard bought a house, set up a household, received in much style,
and gave many proofs of possessing a fine taste in all things. Thus,
from 1800 to 1812, Monsieur and Madame Evangelista were objects of
great interest to the community of Bordeaux.
The Spaniard died in 1813, leaving his wife a widow at thirty-two years
of age, with an immense fortune and the prettiest little girl in the world,
a child of eleven, who promised to be, and did actually become, a most
accomplished young woman. Clever as Madame Evangelista was, the
Restoration altered her position; the royalist party cleared its ranks and
several of the old families left Bordeaux. Though the head and hand of
her husband were lacking in the direction of her affairs, for which she

had hitherto shown the indifference of a Creole and the inaptitude of a
lackadaisical woman, she was determined to make no change in her
manner of living. At the period when Paul resolved to return to his
native town, Mademoiselle Natalie Evangelista was a remarkably
beautiful young girl, and, apparently, the richest match in Bordeaux,
where the steady diminution of her mother's capital was unknown. In
order to prolong her reign, Madame Evangelista had squandered
enormous sums. Brilliant fetes and the continuation of an almost regal
style of living kept the public in its past belief as to the wealth of the
Spanish family.
Natalie was now in her nineteenth year, but no proposal of marriage
had as yet reached her mother's ear. Accustomed to gratify her fancies,
Mademoiselle Evangelista wore cashmeres and jewels, and lived in a
style of luxury which alarmed all speculative suitors in a region and at
a period when sons were as calculating as their parents. The fatal
remark, "None but a prince can afford to marry Mademoiselle
Evangelista," circulated among the salons and the cliques. Mothers of
families, dowagers who had granddaughters to establish, young girls
jealous of Natalie, whose elegance and tyrannical beauty annoyed them,
took pains to envenom this opinion with treacherous remarks. When
they heard a possible suitor say with ecstatic admiration, as Natalie
entered a ball-room, "Heavens, how beautiful she is!" "Yes," the
mammas would answer, "but expensive." If some new-comer thought
Mademoiselle Evangelista bewitching and said to a marriageable man
that he couldn't do it better, "Who would be bold enough," some
woman would reply, "to marry a girl whose mother gives her a
thousand francs a month for her toilet,--a girl who has horses and a
maid of her own, and wears laces? Yes, her 'peignoirs' are trimmed
with mechlin. The price of her washing would support the household of
a clerk. She wears pelerines in the morning which actually cost six
francs to get up."
These, and other speeches said occasionally in the form of praise
extinguished the desires that some men might have had to marry the
beautiful Spanish girl. Queen of every ball, accustomed to flattery,
"blasee" with the smiles and the admiration which followed her every

step, Natalie, nevertheless, knew nothing of life. She lived as the bird
which flies, as the flower that blooms, finding every one about her
eager to do her will. She was ignorant of the price of things; she knew
neither the value of money, nor whence it came, how it should be
managed, and how spent. Possibly she thought that every household
had cooks and coachmen, lady's-maids and footmen, as the fields have
hay and the trees their fruits. To her, beggars and paupers, fallen trees
and waste lands seemed in the same category. Pampered and petted as
her mother's hope, no fatigue was allowed to spoil her pleasure. Thus
she bounded through life as a courser on his steppe, unbridled and
unshod.
Six month's after Paul's arrival the Pink