"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."