s is very great!" cried the old mistress of
the Cat and Racket. "It was like you, no doubt; but I am told that there
is a man on the boulevard who paints lovely portraits for fifty crowns."

"Oh, mother!"

"Poor child, you are quite right," replied Madame Guillaume, who
misinterpreted the expression of her daughter's glance at her. "True,
my child, no one ever can love you as fondly as a mother. My darling,
I guess it all; but confide your sorrows to me, and I will comfort you.
Did I not tell you long ago that the man was mad! Your maid has told me
pretty stories. Why, he must be a perfect monster!"

Augustine laid a finger on her white lips, as if to implore a moment's
silence. During this dreadful night misery had led her to that patient
resignation which in mothers and loving wives transcends in its
effects all human energy, and perhaps reveals in the heart of women the
existence of certain chords which God has withheld from men.

An inscription engraved on a broken column in the cemetery at Montmartre
states that Madame de Sommervieux died at the age of twenty-seven. In
the simple words of this epitaph one of the timid creature's friends can
read the last scene of a tragedy. Every year, on the second of November,
the solemn day of the dead, he never passes this youthful monument
without wondering whether it does not need a stronger woman than
Augustine to endure the violent embrace of genius?

"The humble and modest flowers that bloom in the valley," he reflects,
"perish perhaps when they are transplanted too near the skies, to the
region where storms gather and the sun is scorching."

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Aiglemont, General, Marquis Victor d'
The Firm of Nucingen
A Woman of Thirty

Birotteau, Cesar
Cesar Birotteau
A Bachelor's Establishment

Camusot
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Bachelor's Establishment
Cousin Pons
The Muse of the Department
Cesar Birotteau

Cardot, Jean-Jerome-Severin
A Start in Life
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Bachelor's Establishment
Cesar Birotteau

Carigliano, Marechal, Duc de
Father Goriot
Sarrasine

Carigliano, Duchesse de
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
The Peasantry
The Member for Arcis

Gui