Part 8

“She is in love with that little cavalry colonel, because he rides well----”

“Theodore!”

“Let me be!” said the painter in a tone almost like a roar.

It would be odious to describe the whole scene. In the end the frenzy of passion prompted the artist to acts and words which any woman not so young as Augustine would have ascribed to madness.

At eight o’clock next morning Madame Guillaume, surprising her daughter, found her pale, with red eyes, her hair in disorder, holding a handkerchief soaked with tears, while she gazed at the floor strewn with the torn fragments of a dress and the broken fragments of a large gilt picture-frame. Augustine, almost senseless with grief, pointed to the wreck with a gesture of deep despair.

“I don’t know that the loss 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

Guillaume Cesar Birotteau

Lebas, Joseph Cesar Birotteau Cousin Betty

Lebas, Madame Joseph (Virginie) Cesar Birotteau Cousin Betty

Lourdois Cesar Birotteau

Rabourdin, Xavier The Government Clerks Cesar Birotteau The Middle Classes

Roguin, Madame Cesar Birotteau Pierrette A Second Home A Daughter of Eve

Sommervieux, Theodore de The Government Clerks Modeste Mignon

Sommervieux, Madame Theodore de (Augustine) At the Sign of the Cat and Racket Cesar Birotteau