Then, again, here was Lord O----- came in the other day from
Albano, being rather unwell; so the Pope sends him his special blessing,
when pop! he dies right off in a twinkling. There is nothing so fatal as
his blessing. We were a great deal better off under Gregory, before he
blessed us. Now, if he hasn't the _jettatura_, what is it that makes
everything turn out at cross purposes with him? For my part, I don't wonder
the workmen at the Column refused to work the other day in raising it,
unless the Pope stayed away."
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
_tragedienne_ seemed to seek, bewildered, some cause for the blow that had
fallen thus unexpectedly.
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