No less a person than Rachel seems also to have been affected with this same superstition in regard to the Pope, if we may place confidence in the strange story which Madame de B----- relates in her memoirs of that celebrated daughter of Israel. According to her account, Rachel had been on a visit to her sister, who was quite ill in the Pyrenees, when one day the disease appeared to take so favorable a turn that Rachel left her to visit another sister. There she met several friends, and, (to continue the story in Madame de B-----'s words,) "exhilarated by the good news she had brought, and the hopes all hastened to build on the change, she began to chat and laugh quite merrily. In the midst of this exuberant gayety, her maid broke into the room in a state of great excitement; a fit had come on, the patient was in much danger, the physician desired Mdlle. Rachel's immediate presence. Rising with the bound of a wounded tigress, the _tragédienne_ seemed to seek, bewildered, some cause for the blow that had fallen thus unexpectedly. Her eye lighted on a rosary blessed by the Pope, and which she had worn round her arm as a bracelet ever since her visit to Rome. Without, perhaps, accounting to herself for the belief, she had attached some talismanic virtue to the beads. Now, however, in the height of her rage and disappointment, she tore them from her wrist, and, dashing them to the ground, exclaimed, 'Oh, fatal gift! 'tis thou hast entailed this curse upon me!' With these words, she sprang out of the room, leaving every one in mute astonishment at her frantic action." On the 23d of June, immediately after, the sister died.
And yet the Pope does not at all answer to the accredited portraits of those who have the Evil Eye. He is fat, smiling, and most pleasant of aspect, as he is good in heart. But, certainly, nothing has prospered that he has touched. Read Dumas' description, and see if you should have recognized the Pope as a _jettatore_. "_Le Jettatore_," says he, "_est ordinairement pâle et maigre. II a un nez en bec de corbin, de gros yeux qui ont quelque chose de ceux de crapaud, et qu'il recouvre ordinairement pour les dissimuler d'une paire de lunettes._" But it is the exception that proves the rule, say those who insist on the _jettatura_ of Pius IX.