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.
Dumas also speaks of a work on the jettatura, which I have vainly endeavored to procure, written by Nicola Valetta; and from what one can gather from the heads of the chapters which Dumas gives, it must be a very amusing book. [Footnote: The title of this work is Cicalata sul Fascino, volgarmente detto Jettatura, by Nicola Valetta. It was published more than fifty years since, and copies are now rare.] These heads are as follows. They speak for themselves, and show the fear entertained of a monk. He examines:—
"1. If a man inflicts a more terrible jettatura than a woman?
"2. If he who wears a peruke is more to be feared than he who wears none?
"3. If he who wears spectacles is not more to be feared than he who wears a peruke?
"4. If he who takes tobacco is not more to be feared than he who wears spectacles? and if spectacles, peruke, and snuff-box combined do not triple the force of the jettatura?
"5. If the woman jettatrice is more to be feared when she is enceinte?
"6. If there is still more to be feared from her when she is certain that she is not enceinte?
"7. If monks are more generally jettatori than other men? and among monks what order is most to be feared?