lips, he has dealt a deadly wound to _her_, his wife in truth, whom he forsook for a social chimera,--then he must either die or take refuge in a materialistic, selfish, and heartless philosophy, from which impassioned souls shrink in horror. As for Mme. de Beauseant, she doubtless did not imagine that her friend’s despair could drive him to suicide, when he had drunk deep of love for nine years. Possibly she may have thought that she alone was to suffer. At any rate, she did quite rightly to refuse the most humiliating of all positions; a wife may stoop for weighty social reasons to a kind of compromise which a mistress is bound to hold in abhorrence, for in the purity of her passion lies all its justification. ANGOULEME, September 1832. ADDENDUM The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy. Beauseant, Marquis and Comte de Father Goriot An Episode under the Terror Beauseant, Marquise de Letters of Two Brides Beauseant, Vicomte de Father Goriot Beauseant, Vicomtesse de Father Goriot Albert Savarus Champignelles, De The Seamy Side of History Jacques (M. de Beauseant’s butler) Father Goriot Nueil, Gaston de The Deserted Woman Albert Savarus End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Deserted Woman, by Honore de Balzac