“What, again?  Listen.  One lovely morning at Tours a young man, who held the hand of a pretty woman in his, went on board the Ville d’Angers.  Thus united they both looked and wondered long at a white form that rose elusively out of the mists above the broad waters of the Loire, like some child of the sun and the river, or some freak of air and cloud.  This translucent form was a sylph or a naiad by turns; she hovered in the air like a word that haunts the memory, which seeks in vain to grasp it; she glided among the islands, she nodded her head here and there among the tall poplar trees; then she grew to a giant’s height; she shook out the countless folds of her drapery to the light; she shot light from the aureole that the sun had litten about her face; she hovered above the slopes of the hills and their little hamlets, and seemed to bar the passage of the boat before the Chateau d’Usse.  You might have thought that La dame des belles cousines sought to protect her country from modern intrusion.”

“Well, well, I understand.  So it went with Pauline.  But how about Foedora?”

“Oh!  Foedora, you are sure to meet with her!  She was at the Bouffons last night, and she will go to the Opera this evening, and if you like to take it so, she is Society.”

ADDENDUM

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

Aquilina
  Melmoth Reconciled

Bianchon, Horace
  Father Goriot
  The Atheist’s Mass
  Cesar Birotteau
  The Commission in Lunacy
  Lost Illusions
  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
  A Bachelor’s Establishment
  The Secrets of a Princess
  The Government Clerks
  Pierrette
  A Study of Woman
  Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
  Honorine
  The Seamy Side of History
  A Second Home
  A Prince of Bohemia
  Letters of Two Brides
  The Muse of the Department
  The Imaginary Mistress
  The Middle Classes
  Cousin Betty
  The Country Parson
In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following: 
  Another Study of Woman
  La Grande Breteche

Canalis, Constant-Cyr-Melchior, Baron de
  Letters of Two Brides
  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
  Modeste Mignon
  Another Study of Woman
  A Start in Life
  Beatrix
  The Unconscious Humorists
  The Member for Arcis

Dudley, Lady Arabella
  The Lily of the Valley
  The Ball at Sceaux
  The Secrets of a Princess
  A Daughter of Eve
  Letters of Two Brides

Euphrasia
  Melmoth Reconciled

Joseph
  A Study of Woman

Massol
  Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
  A Daughter of Eve
  Cousin Betty
  The Unconscious Humorists

Navarreins, Duc de
  A Bachelor’s Establishment
  Colonel Chabert
  The Muse of the Department
  The Thirteen
  Jealousies of a Country Town
  The Peasantry
  Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
  The Country Parson
  The Gondreville Mystery
  The Secrets of a Princess
  Cousin Betty