Madame Moritz

A widow with four children who could not endure her daughter Justine, treating her ill after her husband's death, while Justine remained her father's favourite; after her other children died, leaving only Justine, her conscience troubled her and, being a Roman Catholic, her confessor encouraged her belief that the deaths were divine judgement for her partiality. She called Justine home a few months after Victor's departure for Ingolstadt, vacillating between begging forgiveness and accusing Justine of causing the deaths, and eventually declined from perpetual fretting, dying at the start of last winter.