If heavenly spirits can suffer, my mother suffers this day that her son should have deserted from his duty." Never had Colonel Fortescue felt greater pity for a man than for Broussard then.

The shame of confessing that his mother's son had forfeited his honor was like death itself to Broussard.
"But there is joy in Heaven over a penitent sinner," said Colonel Fortescue, who believed in God, and was neither afraid nor ashamed to say so.
Broussard bowed his head.
"My mother--God bless her--was the very spirit of honor.

She was the daughter of an officer.

When I was a little chap and said I wanted to be a soldier, she would tell me the stories of the Spartan mothers, who hade their sons return with their shields or on them.

Thank God, she was taken away before dishonor fell upon her eldest son.