Quotation from: The Arrow of Gold

Written by: Joseph Conrad

"Well, speaking with all possible respect, it seems to have
affected my mother's brain. I was already with the royal army and
of course there could be no question of regular postal
communications with France. My mother hears or overhears somewhere
that the heiress of Mr. Allegre is contemplating a secret journey.
All the noble Salons were full of chatter about that secret
naturally. So she sits down and pens an autograph: 'Madame,
Informed that you are proceeding to the place on which the hopes of
all the right thinking people are fixed, I trust to your womanly
sympathy with a mother's anxious feelings, etc., etc.,' and ending
with a request to take messages to me and bring news of me. . . The
coolness of my mother!"