yths. Myths are pressing us from every point; they serve all theories,
they explain all questions. They are, according to human ideas, the
torches of history; they would save empires from revolution if only the
professors of history would force the explanations they give into the
mind of the provincial masses. If Mademoiselle Cormon had been a reader
or a student, and if there had existed in the department of the Orne a
professor of anthropology, or even had she read Ariosto, the frightful
disasters of her conjugal life would never have occurred. She would
probably have known why the Italian poet makes Angelica prefer Medoro,
who was a blond Chevalier de Valois, to Orlando, whose mare was dead,
and who knew no better than to fly into a passion. Is not Medoro the
mythic form for all courtiers of feminine royalty, and Orlando the myth
of disorderly, furious, and impotent revolutions, which destroy but
cannot produce? We publish, but without assuming any responsibility for
it, this opinion of a pupil of Monsieur Ballanche.

No information has reached us as to the fate of the negroes' heads in
diamonds. You may see Madame du Val-Noble every evening at the Opera.
Thanks to the education given her by the Chevalier de Valois, she has
almost the air of a well-bred woman.

Madame du Bousquier still lives; is not that as much as to say she still
suffers? After reaching the age of sixty--the period at which women
allow themselves to make confessions--she said confidentially to Madame
du Coudrai, that she had never been able to endure the idea of dying an
old maid.

ADDENDUM

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

(Note: The Collection of Antiquities is a companion piece to The Old
Maid. In other Addendum appearances they are combined under the title of
The Jealousies of a Country Town.)

Bordin
The Gondreville Mystery
The Seamy Side of History
The Commission in Lunacy

Bousquier, Du (or Du Croisier or Du Bourguier)
The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)
The Middle Classes

Bousquier, Madame du (du Croisier) (Mlle. Cormon)
The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)

Casteran, De
The Chouans
The Seamy Side of History
The Collection of Antiquities (companion piece)
Beatrix
The Peasantry

Chesnel (or Choisnel)
The Seamy Side of History
The Collection