e, and giving various hunting parties
on the estate at Lanstrac, Paul saw very plainly that provincial life
would never do without marriage. Too young to employ his time in
miserly occupations, or in trying to interest himself in the speculative
improvements in which provincials sooner or later engage (compelled
thereto by the necessity of establishing their children), he soon felt
the need of that variety of distractions a habit of which becomes
at last the very life of a Parisian. A name to preserve, property to
transmit to heirs, social relations to be created by a household
where the principal families of the neighborhood could assemble, and
a weariness of all irregular connections, were not, however, the
determining reasons of his matrimonial desires. From the 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