have had her in mind a few years later when he said of Mademoiselle de
Mortsauf in _Le Lys dans la Vallee_: "The girl's clear sight had,
though only of late, seen to the bottom of her mother's heart. . . ."
for Mademoiselle Josephine entered the convent for various reasons,
one being in order to relieve the financial strain and make marriage
possible for her younger sister, another perhaps being to atone for
the secret she probably suspected in the heart of her mother, and
which she felt was not complimentary to the memory of her father. And
also, in _La Recherche de l'Absolu_: "There comes a moment, in the
inner life of families, when the children become, either voluntarily
or involuntarily, the judges of their parents."

In writing the introduction to the _Physiologie du Mariage_, Balzac
states that here he is merely the humble secretary of two women. He is
doubtless referring to Madame d'Abrantes as one of the two when he
says:

"Some days later the author found himself in the company of two
ladies. The first had been one of the most humane and most
intellectual women of the court of Napoleon. Having attained a
high social position, the Restoration surprised her and caused her
downfall; she had become a hermit. The other, young, beautiful,
was playing at that time, in Paris, the role of a fashionable
woman. They were friends, for the one being forty years of age,
and the other twenty-two, their aspirations rarely caused their
vanity to appear on the same scene. 'Have you noticed, my dear,
that in general women love only fools?'--'_What are you saying,
Duchess?_'"[*]

[*] M. Turquain states that Madame Hamelin is one of these women and
that the Duchesse d'Abrantes in incontestably the other. For a
different opinion, see the chapter on Madame Gay. The italics are
the present writer's.

In _La Femme abandonnee_, Madame de Beauseant resembles the Duchess as
portrayed in this description:

"All the courage of her house seemed to gleam from the great lady's
brilliant eyes, such courage as women use to repel audacity or
scorn, for they were full of tenderness and gentleness. The
outline of that little head, . . . the delicate, fine features,
the subtle curve of the lips, the mobile face itself, wore an
expression of delicate discretion, a faint semblance of irony
suggestive of craft and insolence. It would have been difficult to
refuse forgiveness to those two feminine