Proteus, son of Poseidon in Greek mythology, had the double gift of predicting the future and changing shape at will. As a worthy heiress, Protéa is a dimorphic heroine, a pioneer of cross-dressing, a queen of transformism and change at sight. At the time of the first steps of the seventh art, Victorin Jasset plays with Protéa a role of agent of connection between the "printed cinema" (the serial novels) and the cinema in movement. But – unlike other works of the time – Protéa owes nothing to literature and founds a properly cinematic myth, a figure born from and for cinema. From then on, Protea, among other prophecies, tells the future of a genre in cinema: the spy film. To stay in the register of surfemmas, there’s a direct line from Protéa (Josette Andriot) to the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson).