Part 27

Mademoiselle de Watteville behaves in the most extraordinary manner. “She has vagaries,” people say. Every year she goes to gaze at the walls of the Grande Chartreuse. Perhaps she dreams of imitating her grand-uncle by forcing the walls of the monastery to find a husband, as Watteville broke through those of his monastery to recover his liberty.

She left Besancon in 1841, intending, it was said, to get married; but the real reason of this expedition is still unknown, for she returned home in a state which forbids her ever appearing in society again. By one of those chances of which the Abbe de Grancey had spoken, she happened to be on the Loire in a steamboat of which the boiler burst. Mademoiselle de Watteville was so severely injured that she lost her right arm and her left leg; her face is marked with fearful scars, which have bereft her of her beauty; her health, cruelly upset, leaves her few days free from suffering. In short, she now never leaves the Chartreuse of les Rouxey, where she leads a life wholly devoted to religious practices.

PARIS, May 1842.

ADDENDUM

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

Beauseant, Vicomtesse de Father Goriot The Deserted Woman

Genovese Massimilla Doni

Hannequin, Leopold Beatrix Cousin Betty Cousin Pons

Jeanrenaud The Commission in Lunacy

Nueil, Gaston de The Deserted Woman

Rhetore, Duc Alphonse de A Bachelor’s Establishment A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life Letters of Two Brides The Member for Arcis

Savaron de Savarus The Quest of the Absolute

Savarus, Albert Savaron de The Quest of the Absolute

Schinner, Hippolyte The Purse A Bachelor’s Establishment Pierre Grassou A Start in Life The Government Clerks Modeste Mignon The Imaginary Mistress The Unconscious Humorists

Tinti, Clarina Massimilla Doni