Etext prepared by Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com

and John Bickers, jbickers@ihug.co.nz

WOMEN IN THE LIFE OF BALZAC

By Juanita Helm Floyd

TO

MY SISTER NANNIE

" . . . for no one knows the secret of my life,
and I do not wish to disclose it to any one."
/Lettres a l'Etrangere/, V. I, p. 418, July 19, 1837.

PREPARER'S NOTE

This text was originally published in 1921 by Henry Holt and
Company.

PREFACE

In presenting this study of Balzac's intimate relations with various women, the author regrets her inability, owing to war conditions, to consult a few books which are out of print and certain documents which have not appeared at all in print, notably the collection of the late Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul.

The author gladly takes this opportunity of acknowledging her deep gratitude to various scholars, and wishes to express, even if inadequately, her appreciation of their inspiring contact; especially to Professor Chester Murray and Professor J. Warshaw for first interesting her in the great possibilities of a study of Balzac. To Professor Henry Alfred Todd she is grateful for his sympathetic scholarship, valuable suggestions as to matter and style, and for his careful revision of the manuscript; to Professor Gustave Lanson, for his erudition and versatile mind, which have had a great influence; to Professor F. M. Warren, for reading a part of the text and for many general ideas; to Professor Fernand Baldensperger, for reading the text and for encouragement; to Professor Gilbert Chinard, Professor Earle B. Babcock and Professor LeBraz for re-reading the text and for valuable suggestions; and to Professor John L. Gerig for his sympathetic interest, broad information, and inspiring encouragement.

To still another would she express her thanks. The Princess Radziwill has taken a great interest in this work, which deals so minutely with the life history of her aunt, and she has been most gracious in giving the author much information not to be found in books. She has made many valuable suggestions, read the entire manuscript, and approved of its presentation of the facts involved.

JUANITA H. FLOYD.
Evansville, Indiana.

INTRODUCTION

A quantity of books have been written about Balzac, some of which are very instructive, while others are nothing but compilations of gossip which give a totally wrong impression of the life, works and personality of the great French novelist. Having the honor of being the niece of his wife, the wonderful /Etrangere/, whom he married after seventeen years of an affection which contained episodes far more romantic than any of those which he has described in his many books, and having been brought up in the little house of the rue Fortunee, afterwards the rue Balzac, where they lived during their short married life, I can perhaps better appreciate than most people the value of these different books, none of which gives us an exact appreciation of the man or of the difficulties through which he had to struggle before he won at last the fame he deserved. And the conclusion to which I came, after having read them most attentively and conscientiously, was that it is often a great misfortune to possess that divine spark of genius which now and then touches the brow of a few human creatures and marks them for eternity with its fiery seal. Had Balzac been one of those everyday writers whose names, after having been for a brief space of time on everyone's lips, are later on almost immediately forgotten, he would not have been subjected to the calumnies which embittered so much of his declining days, and which even after he was no longer in this world continued their subterranean and disgusting work, trying to sully not only Balzac's own colossal personality, but also that of the devoted wife, whom he had cherished for such a long number of years, who had all through their course shared his joys and his sorrows, and who, after he died, had spent the rest of her own life absorbed in the remembrance of her love for him, a love which was stronger than death itself.

Having spent all my childhood and youth under the protection and the roof of Madame de Balzac, it was quite natural that every time I saw another inaccuracy or falsehood concerning her or her great husband find its way into the press, I should be deeply affected. At last I began to look with suspicion at all the books dealing with Balzac or with his works, and when Miss Floyd asked me to look over her manuscript, it was with a certain amount of distrust and prejudice that I set myself to the task. It seemed to me impossible that a foreigner could write anything worth reading about Balzac, or understand his psychology. What was therefore my surprise when I discovered in this most remarkable volume the best description that has ever been given to us of this particular phase of Balzac's life which hitherto has hardly been touched upon by his numerous biographers, his friendships with the many distinguished women who at one time or another played a part in his busy existence, a description which not only confirmed down to the smallest details all that my aunt had related to me about her distinguished husband, but which also gave an appreciation of the latter's character that entirely agreed with what I had heard about its peculiarities from the few people who had known him well, Theophile Gautier among others, who were still alive when I became old enough to be intensely interested in their different judgments about my uncle. After such a length of years it seemed almost uncanny to find a person who through sheer intuition and hard study could have reconstituted with this unerring accuracy the figure of one who had remained a riddle in certain things even to his best friends, and who in the pages of this extraordinary book suddenly appeared before my astonished eyes with all the splendor of that genius of his which as years go by, becomes more and more admired and appreciated.

One must be a scholar to understand Balzac; his style and manner of writing is often so heavy and so difficult to follow, reminding one more of that of a professor than of a novelist. And indeed he would have been very angry to be considered only as a novelist, he who aspired and believed himself to be, as he expressed it one day in the course of a conversation with Madame Hanska, before she became his wife, "a great painter of humanity," in which appreciation of his work he was not mistaken, because some of the characters he evoked out of his wonderful brain remind one of those pictures of Rembrandt where every stroke of the master's brush reveals and brings into evidence some particular trait or feature, which until he had discovered it, and brought it to notice, no one had seen or remarked on the human faces which he reproduced upon the canvas. Michelet, who once called St. Simon the "Rembrandt of literature," could very well have applied the same remark to Balzac, whose heroes will live as long as men and women exist, for whom these other men and women whom he described, will relive because he did not conjure their different characters out of his imagination only, but condensed all his observations into the creation of types which are so entirely human and real that we shall continually meet with them so long as the world lasts.

One of Balzac's peculiarities consisted in perpetually studying humanity, which study explains the almost unerring accuracy of his judgments and of the descriptions which he gives us of things and facts as well as of human beings. In his impulsiveness, he frequented all kinds of places, saw all kinds of people, and tried to apply the dissecting knife of his spirit of observation to every heart and every conscience. He set himself especially to discover and fathom the mystery of the "eternal feminine" about which he always thought, and it was partly due to this eager quest for knowledge of women's souls that he allowed himself to become entangled in love affairs and love intrigues which sometimes came to a sad end, and that he spent his time in perpetual search of feminine friendships, which were later on to brighten, or to mar his life.

Miss Floyd in the curious volume which she has written has caught in a surprising manner this particular feature in Balzac's complex character. She has applied herself to study not only the man such as he was, with all his qualities, genius and undoubted mistakes, but such as he appeared to be in the eyes of the different women whom he had loved or admired, and at whose hands he had sought encouragement and sympathy amid the cruel disappointments and difficulties of an existence from which black care was never banished and never absent. With quite wonderful tact, and a lightness of touch one can not sufficiently admire, she has made the necessary distinctions which separated friendship from love in the many romantic attachments which played such an important part in Balzac's life, and she has in consequence presented to us simultaneously the writer, whose name will remain an immortal one, and the man whose memory was treasured, long after he had himself disappeared, by so many who, though they had perhaps never understood him entirely, yet had realized that in the marks of affection and attachment which he had given to them, he had laid at their feet something which was infinitely precious, infinitely real, something which could never be forgotten.

Her book will remain a most valuable, I was going to say the most valuable, contribution to the history of Balzac, and those for whom he was something more than a great writer and scholar, can never feel sufficiently grateful to her for having given it to the world, and helped to dissipate, thanks to its wonderful arguments, so many false legends and wild stories which were believed until now, and indeed are still believed by an ignorant crowd of so-called admirers of his, who, nine times out of ten, are only detractors of his colossal genius, and remarkable, though perhaps sometimes too exuberant, individuality.

At the same time, Miss Floyd, in the lines which she devotes to my aunt and to the long attachment that had united the latter and Balzac, has in many points re-established the truth in regard to the character of a woman who in many instances has been cruelly calumniated and slandered, in others absolutely misunderstood, to whom Balzac once wrote that she was "one of those great minds, which solitude had preserved from the petty meannesses of the world," words which describe her better than volumes could have done. She had truly led a silent, solitary, lonely life that had known but one love, the man whom she was to marry after so many vicissitudes, and in spite of so many impediments, and but one tenderness, her daughter, a daughter who unfortunately was entirely her inferior, and in whom she could never find consolation or comfort, who could neither share her joys, nor soothe her sorrows.

In her convictions, Madame de Balzac was a curious mixture of atheism and profound faith in a Divinity before whom mankind was accountable for all its good or bad deeds. All through her long life she had been under the influence of her father, one of the remarkable men of his generation, who had enjoyed the friendship of most of the great French writers of the period immediately preceding the Revolution, including Voltaire; he had brought her up in an atmosphere of the eighteenth century with its touch of skepticism, and the Encyclopedia had always remained for her a kind of gospel, in spite of the fact that she had been reared in one of the most haughty, aristocratic circles in Europe, in a country where the very mention of the words /liberty/ and /freedom of opinion/ was tabooed, and that her mother had been one of those devout Roman Catholics who think it necessary to consult their confessor, even in regard to the most trivial details of their daily existence. Placed as she had been between her parents' incredulity and bigotry, my aunt had formed opinions of her own, of which a profound tolerance and a deep respect for the beliefs and convictions of others was the principal feature. She never condemned even when she did not approve, and she hated hypocrisy, no matter in what shape or aspect it presented itself before her eyes. This explains the courage she displayed when against the advice and the wishes of her family, she persisted in marrying Balzac, though it hardly helps us to understand from what we know of the latter's character, how he came to fall so deeply in love with a woman who in almost everything thought so differently from what he thought, especially in regard to those two subjects which absorbed and engrossed him until the last days of his life, religion and politics.

That he loved her, and that she loved him, in spite of these differences in their points of view, is to their mutual honor, but it adds to the mystery and to the enigmatical side of a romance that has hardly been equalled in modern times; and it accounts for the fact that some friction occurred between them later on, when my aunt found herself trying to restrain certain exuberances on the part of her husband regarding her own high lineage, about which she never thought much herself, though she had always tried to live up to the duties which it imposed upon her. I am mentioning this circumstance to explain certain exaggerations which we constantly find in Balzac's letters in regard to his marriage. His imagination was extremely vivid, and its fertility sometimes carried him far away into regions where it was nearly impossible to follow him, and where he really came to believe quite sincerely in things which had never existed. For instance in his correspondence with his mother and friends, he is always speaking of the necessity for Madame Hanska to obtain the permission of the Czar to marry him. This is absolutely untrue. My aunt did not require in the very least the consent of the Emperor to become Madame de Balzac. The difficulties connected with her marriage consisted in the fact that having been left sole heiress of her first husband's immense wealth, she did not think herself justified in keeping it after she had contracted another union, and with a foreigner. She therefore transferred her whole fortune to her daughter, reserving for herself only an annuity which was by no means considerable, and it was this arrangement that had to be sanctioned, not by the sovereign who had nothing to do with it, but by the Supreme Court of Russia, which at that time was located in St. Petersburg. Balzac, however, wishing to impress his French relatives with the grandeur of the marriage he was about to make, imagined this tale of the Czar's opposition, in order to add to his own importance and to that of his future wife, an invention which revolted my aunt so much that in that part of her husband's correspondence which was published by her a year or two before her death, she carefully suppressed all the passages which contained this assertion which had so thoroughly annoyed as well as angered her. I have sometimes wondered what she would have said had she seen appear in print the curious letter which Balzac wrote immediately after their wedding to Dr. Nacquart in which he described with such pomp the different high qualities, merits, and last but not least, brilliant positions occupied by his wife's relatives, beginning with Queen Marie Leszczinska, the consort of Louis XV, and ending with the husband of my father's stepdaughter, Count Orloff, whom the widest stretch of imagination could not have connected with my aunt.

I cannot refrain from mentioning here an anecdote which is very typical of Balzac. He was about to return to Paris from Russia after his marriage. My aunt coming into his room one morning found him absorbed in writing a letter. Asking him for whom it was intended she was petrified with astonishment when he replied that it was for the Duke de Bordeaux, as the Comte de Chambord was still called at the time, to present his respects to him upon his entrance into his family! My aunt at first could not understand what it was he meant, and when at last she had grasped the fact that it was in virtue of her distant, very distant, relationship with Queen Marie Leszczinska that he claimed the privilege of cousinship with the then Head of the Royal House of France, it was with the greatest difficulty and with any amount of trouble that she prevailed upon him at last to give up this remarkable idea, and to be content with the knowledge that some Rzewuski blood flowed in the veins of the last remaining member of the elder line of the Bourbons, without intruding upon the privacy of the Comte de Chambord, who probably would have been somewhat surprised to receive this extraordinary communication from the great, but also snobbish Balzac.

It was on account of this snobbishness, which had something childish about it, that he sometimes became involved in discussions, not only with my aunt, but also with several of his friends, Victor Hugo among others, who could not bring themselves to forgive him for thinking more of the great and illustrious families with which his marriage had connected him than of his own genius and marvelous talents. Hugo most unjustly accused my aunt of encouraging this "aberration," as he called it, of Balzac's mind; in which judgment of her he was vastly mistaken, because she was the person who suffered the most through it, and by it. But this unwarranted suspicion made him antagonistic to her, and probably inspired the famous description he left us of Balzac's last hours in the little volume called /Choses vues/. This was partly the cause why people afterwards said that my aunt's married life with the great writer had been far from happy, and had resolved itself into a great disappointment for both of them. The reality was very different, because during the few months they lived together, they had known and enjoyed complete and absolute happiness, and Madame de Balzac's heart was forever broken when she closed with pious hands the eyes of the man who had occupied such an immense place in her heart as well as in her life. Many years later, talking with me about those last sad hours when she watched with such tender devotion by his bedside, she told me with accents that are still ringing in my ears with their wail of agony: I lived through a hell of suffering on that day.

Nevertheless she bore up bravely under the load of the unmerited misfortunes which had fallen upon her. Her first care, after she had become for the second time a widow, was to pay Balzac's debts, which she proceeded to do with the thoroughness she always brought to bear in everything she undertook. She remained upon the most affectionate terms with his family, and it was due to her that Balzac's mother was able to spend her last years in comfort. These facts speak for themselves, and, to my mind at least, dispose better than volumes on the subject could do of the conscious or unconscious calumny cast by Victor Hugo on my aunt's memory. It must here be explained that the real reason why he did not see her, when he called for the last time on his dying friend, and concluded so hastily that she preferred remaining in her own apartments than at her husband's side, consisted in the fact that she did not like the poet, who she instinctively felt, also did not care for her, so she preferred not to encounter a man whom she knew as antagonistic to herself at an hour when she was about to undergo the greatest trial of her life, and she retired to her room when he was announced. But Hugo, who had often reproached Balzac for being vain, had in his own character a dose of vanity sufficient to make him refuse to admit that there could exist in the whole of the wide world a human being who would not have jumped at the chance of seeing him, even under the most distressing of circumstances.

I have said already that my aunt's opinions consisted of a curious mixture of atheism and a profound belief in the Divinity. Her mind was far too vigorous and too deep to accept without discussion the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church to which she belonged officially, and she formed her own ideas as to religion and the part it ought to play in human existence. She held the firm conviction that we must always try, at least, to do what is right, regardless of the sorrow this might entail upon us. In one of her letters to my mother, she says:

"You will know one day, my dear little sister, that what one cares the most to read over again in the book of life are those difficult pages of the past when, after a hard struggle, duty has remained the master of the battle field. It has buried its dead, and brushed aside all the reminders that were left of them, and God in his infinite mercy allows flowers and grasses to grow again on this bloody ground. Don't think that by these flowers, I mean to say that one forgets. No, on the contrary, I am thinking of remembrance, the remembrance of the victory that has been won after so many sacrifices; I am thinking of all those voices of the conscience which come to soothe us, and to tell us that our Father in Heaven is satisfied with what we have done."

A person who had intimately known both Balzac and my aunt said one day that they completed each other by the wide difference which existed in their opinions in regard to the two important subjects of religion and politics. The remark was profoundly true, because it was this very difference which allowed them to bring into their judgments an impartiality which we seldom meet with in our modern society. They mutually respected and admired each other, and even when they were not in perfect accord, or just because they were not in perfect accord as to this or that thing, they nevertheless tried, thanks to the respect which they entertained for each other, to look upon mankind, its actions, follies and mistakes, with kindness and indulgence. The curious thing in regard to their situation was that my aunt who had been born and reared in one of the most select and prejudiced of aristocratic circles, never knew what prejudice was, and remained until the last day of her life a staunch liberal, who could never bring herself to ostracize her neighbor, because he happened to think or to believe otherwise than she did herself. She was perfectly indifferent to advantages of birth, fortune or high rank, and she was rather inclined to criticize than to admire the particular society and world amidst which she moved. Balzac on the contrary, though a /bourgeois/ by origin, cared only for those high spheres for which he had always longed since his early youth, and of which a sudden freak of fortune so unexpectedly had opened him the doors. In that sense he was the /parvenu/ his enemies have accused him of being, and he often showed himself narrow minded, until at last his wife's influence made him consider, without the disdain he had affected for them before, people who were not of noble birth or of exalted rank. On the other hand, Madame de Balzac, thanks to her husband's Catholic and Legitimistic tendencies and sympathies, became less sarcastic than had been the case when she had, perhaps more than she ought, noticed the smallnesses and meannesses of the particular set of people who at that period constituted the cream of European society. They both came to acquire a wider view of the world in general, thanks to their different ways of looking at it, and this of course turned to their great mutual advantage.

I will not extend myself here on the help my aunt was to Balzac all through the years which preceded their marriage, when there seemed no possibility of the marriage ever taking place. She encouraged him in his work, interested herself in all his actions, praised him for all his efforts, tried to be for him the guide and the star to which he could look in his moments of dark discouragement, as well as in his hours of triumph. Without her affection to console him, he would most probably have broken down under the load of immense difficulties which constantly burdened him, and he never would have been able to leave behind him as a legacy to a world that had never property appreciated or understood him, those volumes of the /Comedie humaine/ which have made his name immortal. Madame Hanska was his good genius all through those long and dreadful years during which he struggled with such indomitable courage against an adverse fate, and her devotion to him certainly deserved the words which he wrote to her one day, "I love you as I love God, as I love happiness!"

All this has taken me very far from Miss Floyd's book, though what I have just written about my uncle and aunt completes in a certain sense the details she has given us concerning the wonderful romance which after seventeen years of arduous waiting, made Madame Hanska the wife of one of the greatest literary glories of France. Her work is magnificent and she has handled it superbly, and reconstituted two remarkable figures who were beginning to be, not forgotten, which is impossible, but not so much talked about by the general public, who a few years ago, had shown itself so interested in their life history as it was first disclosed to us in the famous /Lettres a l'Etrangere/, published by the Vicomte Spoelberch de Lovenjoul. She has also cleared some of the clouds which had been darkening the horizon in regard to both Balzac and his wife, and restored to these two their proper places in the history of French literature in the nineteenth century. She has moreover shown us a hitherto unknown Balzac, and a still more unknown /Etrangere/, and this labor of love, because it was that all through, can only be viewed with feelings of the deepest gratitude by the few members still left alive of Madame de Balzac's family, my three brothers and myself. I feel very happy to be given this opportunity of thanking Miss Floyd, in my brothers' name as well as in my own, for the splendid work which she has done, and which I am quite certain will ensure for her a foremost place among the historians of Balzac.

CATHERINE, PRINCESS RADZIWILL.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The steady rise of Balzac's reputation during the last few decades has been such that almost each year new studies have appeared about him. While the women portrayed in the /Comedie humaine/ are often commented upon, no recent work dealing in detail with the novelist's intimate association with women and which might lead to identifying the possible sources of his feminine characters in real life has been published.

The present study does not undertake to establish the origin of all the characters found in the /Comedie humaine/, but is an attempt to trace the life of the novelist on the side of his relations with various women,—a story which is even more thrilling than those presented in many of his novels,—in the hope that it will help explain some of the interesting enigmas presented by his work. So far as the writer could find the necessary evidence, many of the women in Balzac's novels have been here identified with women he knew in the course of his life; and while giving due weight to the suggestions of various writers, and indicating some of the most striking resemblances, she has tried to avoid a mere promiscuous identification of characters.

In the case of many novelists such an investigation would not be worth while, but Balzac's place in literature is so transcendent and his life and writings are so closely and fascinatingly interblended, that it is hoped that the following study, in which the writer has striven to maintain correctness of detail, may not be unwelcome, and that it will throw light on Balzac's complex character, and help his readers better to understand and appreciate some of his most noted women characters. It is believed that this study will show that the influence of women on Balzac was much wider and his acquaintance with them much broader than has previously been supposed.

Apropos of remarks made by Sainte-Beuve and Brunetiere regarding Balzac's admission to the higher circles of society, Emile Faguet has this to say:

"I would point out that the duchesses and viscountesses at the end of the Restoration were known neither to Sainte-Beuve nor to Balzac, the former only having begun to frequent aristocratic drawing-rooms in 1840, and Balzac, in spite of his very short /liaison/ with Madame de Castries, having become a regular attendant only a few months before that date. Sainte-Beuve himself has told us that the Faubourg Saint-Germain /was closed to men of letters before 1830/, and since it had to spend a few years becoming accustomed to their admittance, Sainte-Beuve's testimony is not at all valid as regards the great ladies of the Restoration, even at the end."

Perhaps it is due partly to the above statement and partly to the fact that Balzac tried to give the impression that he led a sort of monastic life, that it is generally believed the novelist never had access to the aristocratic society of his time, and never had an opportunity of observing the great ladies or of frequenting the marvelous balls and receptions that fill so large a place in his writings. Whether he made a success of such descriptions is not the question here, but the following pages will at least furnish proof that he not only had many social opportunities, but that his presence was sought by many women belonging to high life and the nobility.

In presenting in the following pages a somewhat imposing list of duchesses, countesses and women of varying degrees of nobility, it is not intended to picture Balzac as a /preux chevalier/, for he was far from being one. Even in the most refined of /salons/, he displayed his Rabelaisian manners and costume, and remained the typical author of the /Contes drolatiques/; but to maintain that he never knew women of the upper class or never even entered their society, involves a misapprehension of the facts. Neither would the present writer give the impression that this was the only class of women he knew or associated with, for he certainly was acquainted with many of the /bourgeoisie/ and of the peasant class; but here it is difficult to make out a case, since his letters to or about women of these classes are rare, and literary men of his day have not given many details of his association with them.

From Balzac's youth, his most intense longings were to be famous and to be loved. At times it might almost be thought that the second desire took precedence over the first, but it was not the ordinary woman that this future /Napoleon litteraire/ was seeking. His desire was to win the affection of some lady of high standing, and when urged by his family to consider marriage with a certain rich widow of the /bourgeoisie/, it can be imagined with what a sense of relief he wrote his mother that the bird had flown. An abnormal longing to mingle with the aristocracy remained with him throughout his life; and during his stay at Wierzchownia, after having all but made the conquest of a very rich lady belonging to one of the most noted families of Russia, he flattered himself by exaggerating her greatness.

Not being crowned from the first with the success he desired, Balzac needed encouragement in his work. For this he naturally turned to women who would give him of their time and sympathy. In his early years, he received this encouragement and assistance from his sister Laure, from Madame de Berny, Madame d'Abrantes, Madame Carraud and others, and in his later life he was similarly indebted to Madame Hanska. They gave him ideas, corrected his style, conceived plots, furnished him with historical background, and criticized his work in general. Is it surprising then that, having received so much from women, he should have accorded them so great a place in his writings as well as in his personal life?

While Balzac did not, as is often stated, /create/ the "woman of thirty," this characteristic type having already appeared in Madame de Stael's /Delphine/, in Benjamin Constant's /Adolphe/, and in Stendhal's /Le Rouge et le Noir/, he must be credited with having magnified her charms and presented her advantages and superiority to a much higher degree than had been done before. Women indeed play in general an important role in his work, many of his novels bear their names; about one-third of the stories of /La Comedie humaine/ are dedicated to women; and while not quite so large a proportion of the characters created are women, they are numbered among the most important personages of his prolific fancy.

If we are to believe his own testimony, his popularity among women was by no means limited to his Paris environment, for he writes: "Fame is conveyed to me through the post office by means of letters, and I daily receive three or four from women. They come from the depths of Russia, of Germany, etc.; I have not had one from England. Then there are many letters from young people. It has become fatiguing. . . ."

It was only a matter of justice that women should show their appreciation thus, for Balzac rendered them a gracious service in prolonging, by his enormous literary influence, the period of their eligibility for being loved. This he successfully extended to thirty years, even to forty years; with rare skill he portrayed the charm of a declining beauty—as one might delight in the glory of a brilliant autumn or of a setting sun. At the same time, and on the one hand, he depicted the young girl of various types, and women of the working and servant class. And since his own life is so reflected throughout his work, it is of interest to become acquainted with the inner and intimate side of his genius, which has left us some of the greatest documents we possess concerning human nature.

Balzac knew many women, and to understand him fully one should study his relations with them. If he has portrayed them well, it is because he loved them tenderly, and was loved by many in return. These feminine affections formed one of the consolations of his life; they not only gave him courage but helped to soften the bitterness of his trials and disappointments.

While an effort has been made in the following work to solve the questions as to the identity of the /Sarah, Maria, Sofka, Constance- Victoire, Louise, Caroline,/ and the /Helene/ of Balzac's dedications, and to show the role each played, no attempt has here been made to lift the tightly drawn veil which has so long enveloped one side of Balzac's private life. Whoever wishes to do this may now consult the recent publication of the late Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, or the /Mariage de Balzac/ by the late Count Stanislas Rzewuski. It is far more pleasant—even if the charges be untrue—to think as did the late Miss K. P. Wormeley, that no supporting testimony has been offered to prove anything detrimental to the great author's character. Though doubtless much overdrawn, one prefers the delightful picture of him traced by his old friend, George Sand.

WOMEN IN THE LIFE OF BALZAC

CHAPTER I

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF BALZAC

In the delightful city of Tours, the childhood of Honore de Balzac was spent in the midst of his family. This consisted of an original and most congenial old father, a nervous, business-like mother, two younger sisters, Laure and Laurentia, and a younger brother, Henri. His maternal grandmother, Madame Sallambier, joined the family after the death of her husband.

At about the age of eight, Honore was sent to a semi-military /college/. Here, after six years of confinement, he lost his health, not on account of any work assigned to him by his teachers, for he was regarded as being far from a brilliant student, but because of the abnormal amount of reading which he did on the outside. When he was brought home for recuperation, his old grandmother alternately irritated him with her "nervous attacks" and delighted him with her numerous ways of showing her affection. At this time he wandered about in the fresh air of the province of Touraine, and learned to love its beautiful scenery, which he has immortalized in various novels.

After he had spent a year of this rustic life, his family moved to
Paris in the fall of 1814. There he continued his studies with M.
Lepitre, whose Royalist principles doubtless influenced him. He
attended lectures at the Sorbonne also, strolling meanwhile about the
Latin Quarter, and in 1816 was placed in the law office of M. de
Guillonnet-Merville, a friend of the family, and an ardent Royalist.
After eighteen months in this office, he spent more than a year in the
office of a notary, M. Passez, who was also a family friend.

It was probably during this period of residence in Paris that he first met Madame de Berny, she who was later to wield so great an influence over him and who held first place in his heart until their separation in 1832. Probably at this same period, too, he met Zulma Tourangin, a schoolmate of his sister Laure, and who, as Madame Carraud, was to become his life-long friend. Of all the friendships that Balzac was destined to form with women, this with Madame Carraud was one of the purest, longest and most beautiful.

Having attained his majority and finished his legal studies, Balzac was requested by his father to enter the office of M. Passez and become a business man, but the life was so distasteful to him that he objected and asked permission to spend his time as best he might in developing his literary ability, a request which, in spite of the opposition of the family, was finally granted for a term of two years. He was accordingly allowed to establish himself in a small attic at No. 9 rue Lesdiguieres, while his family moved to Villeparisis.

His father's weakness in thus giving in to his son was most irritating to Balzac's mother, who was endowed with the business faculties so frequently met with among French women. She was convinced that a little experience would soon cause her son to change his mind. But he, on his part, ignored his hardships. He began to dream of a life of fame. In his garret, too, he began to develop that longing for luxury which was to increase with the years, and which was to cost him so much. At this time, he took frequent walks through the cemetery of Pere-Lachaise around the graves of Moliere, La Fontaine and Racine. He would occasionally visit a friend with whom he could converse, but he usually preferred a sympathetic listener, to whom he could pour out his plans and his innermost longings. Otherwise his life was as solitary as it was cloistered. He confined himself to his room for days at a time, working fiercely at the manuscript of the play, /Cromwell/, which he felt to be a masterpiece.

This work he finished and took to his home for approval in April, 1820. What must have been his disappointment when, certain of success, he not only found his play disapproved but was advised to devote his time and talents to anything except literature! But his courage was not daunted thus. Remarking that /tragedies/ appeared not to be in his line, he was ready to return to his garret to attempt another kind of literature, and would have done so, had not his mother, seeing that he would certainly injure his health, interposed; and although only fifteen months of the allotted two years had expired, insisted that he remain at home, and later sent him to Touraine for a much needed rest.

During his stay at home, he was to suffer another disappointment. His sister Laure, to whom he had confided all his secrets and longings, was married to M. Surville in May, 1830, and moved to Bayeux. He was thus deprived of her congenial companionship. The separation is fortunate for posterity, however, since the letters he wrote to her reveal much of the family life, both pleasant and otherwise, together with a great deal concerning his own desires and struggles. Thus early in life, he realized that his was a very "original" family, and regretted not being able to put the whole group into novels. His correspondence gives a very good description of their various eccentricities, and he has later immortalized some of these by portraying them in certain of his characters.

Continually worried by his irritable mother, feeling himself forced to make money by writing lest he be compelled to enter a lawyer's office, he produced in five years, with different collaborators, a vast number of works written under various pseudonyms. He tutored his younger and much petted brother Henri, but found his pleasures outside of the family circle. It was arranged that he should give lessons to one of the sons of M. and Mme. de Berny, and thus he had an opportunity of seeing much of Madame de Berny, whose patience under suffering and sympathetic nature deeply impressed him. On her side, she took an interest in him and devoted much time in helping and indeed "creating" him. Unhappy in her married life, she must have found the companionship of Balzac most interesting, and realizing that the young man had a great future, she acted as a severe critic in correcting his manuscripts, and cheered him in his hours of depression. Her mother having been one of the Queen's ladies in waiting, the Royalist principles previously instilled in the mind of the young author were reinforced by this charming woman, as well as by her mother, who could entertain him indefinitely with her exciting stories of imprisonment and hairbreadth escapes.

After a few years of life at Villeparisis, Balzac removed to Paris. He had met an old friend, M. d'Assonvillez, whom he told of the conflict between his family and himself over his occupation, and this gentleman advised him to seek a business that would make him independent, even offering to provide the necessary funds. Balzac took the advice, and with visions of becoming extremely rich, launched into a publishing career, proposing to bring out one-volume editions of various authors' complete works, commencing with La Fontaine and Moliere. As he did not have the necessary capital for advertising, however, his venture resulted in a loss. His friend then persuaded him to invest in a printing-press, and in August, 1826, he made another beginning. He did not lack courage; but though he later manipulated such wonderful business schemes in his novels he proved to be utterly incapable himself in practical life.

A second time he was doomed to failure, but with his indomitable will he resolved that inasmuch as he had met with such financial disasters through the press, he would recover his fortunes in the same way, and set himself to writing with even greater determination than ever. Now it was that Madame de Berny showed her true devotion by coming to his aid in his financial troubles as well as in his literary ones; she loaned him 45,000 francs, saw to it that the recently purchased type- foundry became the property of her family, and, with the help of Madame Surville, persuaded Madame de Balzac to save her son from the disgrace of bankruptcy by lending him 37,000 francs. Thus, after less than two years of experience, he found himself burdened with a debt which like a black cloud was to hang over him during his entire life. Other friends also came to his rescue. But if Balzac did not have business capacity, his experience in dealing with the financial world, of which he had become a victim, furnished him with material of which he made abundant use later in his works.

In September, 1828, after this business was temporarily out of the way, Balzac went to Brittany to spend a few weeks with some old family friends, the Pommereuls. There he roved over the beautiful country and collected material for /Les Chouans/, the first novel which he signed with his own name. Notwithstanding the fact that before he had reached his thirtieth year, he was staggering under a debt amounting to about 100,000 francs, Balzac with his never-failing hope in the future and his ever-increasing belief in his destiny, cast aside his depression, and fought continually to attain the greatness which was never fully recognized until long after his death.

He had entered on what was indeed a period of struggle. Establishing himself in Paris in the rue de Tournon, and later in the rue de Cassini, he battled with poverty, lacking both food and clothing; but his courage never wavered. Drinking black coffee to keep himself awake, he wrote eighteen hours a day, and when exhausted would run away to the country to relax and visit with his friends. The Baron de Pommereul was only one of a rather numerous group. He frequently visited Madame Carraud at her hospitable home at Frapesle, and M. de Margonne in his chateau at Sache on the Indre. Often he would spend many weeks at a time with the latter, where he made himself perfectly at home, was treated as one of the family, and worked or rested just as he wished. Leading the hermit's life by preference, he needed the quietude of the country atmosphere in order to recover from the great strain to which he subjected himself when the fit of authorship was upon him. Thus it happened that several of his works were written in the homes of various friends.

/Les Chouans/ and other novels met with success. Balzac's reputation now gradually rose, so that by 1831 he was attracting much favorable attention. Among the younger literary set who sought his acquaintance was George Sand with whom he formed a true friendship which lasted throughout his life. Now, too, though he was not betrayed into neglecting his work for society, he accepted invitations, won by his growing reputation, to some of the most noted salons of the day, among them the Empire salon of Madame Sophie Gay, where he met many of the literary and artistic people of his time, including Delphine, the daughter of Madame Gay, who, as Madame de Girardin, was to become one of his intimate friends. Here he met Madame Hamelin and the Duchess d'Abrantes, who was destined to play an important role in his life, and also the tender and impassioned poetess, Madame Desbordes-Valmore. The beautiful Madame Recamier invited him to her salon, too, and had him read to her guests, and he was also a frequent visitor in the salon of the Russian Princess Bagration, where he was fond of telling stories. Besides the salons, he was invited to numerous houses, dining particularly often with the Baron de Trumilly, who took a great interest in his work.

As his fame increased, letters arrived from various part of Europe. Some of these were anonymous, and many were from women. Several of the latter were answered, and early in 1832 Balzac learned that one of his unknown correspondents was the beautiful Marquise de Castries (later the Duchess de Castries). Throwing aside her incognito, she invited him to call, and he, anxious to mingle with the exclusive society of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, gladly accepted and promptly became enraptured with her alluring charm. It was doubtless owing to the influence of her relative, the Duc de Fitz-James, that he became active in politics at this time.

In the course of this same year (1832) there came to him an anonymous letter of great significance, dated from the distant Ukraine, and signed /l'Etrangere/. Though not at that time giving him the slightest presentiment of the outcome, this letter was destined eventually to change the entire life of the novelist. A notice in the /Quotidienne/ acknowledging the receipt of it brought about a correspondence which in the course of events revealed to the author that the stranger's real name was Madame Hanska.

Love affairs, however, were far from being the only things that occupied Balzac. He was continually besieged by creditors; the clouds of his indebtedness were ever ready to burst over his head. Meanwhile, his mother became more and more displeased with him, and impatient at his constant calls upon her for the performance of all manner of services. She now urged him to make a rich marriage and thus put an end to his troubles and hers. But such was not Balzac's inclination, and he rightly considered himself the most deeply concerned in the matter.

All the while he was prodigiously productive, but the profits from his works were exceedingly small. This fact was due to his method of composition, according to which some of his works were revised a dozen times or more, and also to the Belgian piracies, from which all popular French authors suffered. In addition to this, his extravagant tastes developed from year to year, and thus prevented him from materially reducing his debts.

Unlike most Frenchmen, Balzac was particularly fond of travel in foreign countries, and when allured by the charms of a beautiful woman, he forgot his financial obligations and allowed nothing to prevent his responding to the call of the siren. Thus he was enticed by the Marquise de Castries to go to Aix and from there to Geneva in 1832, and one year later he rushed to Neufchatel to meet Madame Hanska, with whom he became so enamored that a few months afterwards he spent several weeks with her at this same fatal city of Geneva where the Marquise had all but broken his heart. In the spring of 1835 he followed a similar desire, this time going as far as the beautiful city of the blue Danube.

The charms of his sirens were not enough, however, to keep so indefatigable a writer from his work. He permitted himself to enjoy social diversions for only a few hours daily and some of his most delightful novels were written during these visits, where it seemed that the very shadow of feminine presence gave him inspiration. It should be added, too, that in the limited time given to society during these journeys, he not only worshipped at the shrine of his particular enchantress of the moment, but managed to meet many other women of social prominence.

As his fame spread, his extravagance increased; with his famous cane, he was seen frequently at the opera, at one time sharing a box with the beautiful Olympe. But his business relations with his publisher, Madame Bechet, which seemed to be promising at first, ended unhappily, and the rapidly declining health of his /Dilecta/, Madame de Berny, not to mention the failure of another publisher Werdet, which there is not space here to recount, cast a gloom from time to time over his optimistic spirit. He now became the proprietor of the /Chronique de Paris/, but aside from the literary friendships involved, notably that of Theophile Gautier, he derived nothing but additional worries from an undertaking he was unfitted to carry out. An even greater anxiety was the famous lawsuit with Buloz, which was finally decided in his favor, but which proved a costly victory, since it left him physically exhausted.

In order to recuperate, he sought refuge in the home of M. de Margonne, and travelled afterwards with Madame Marbouty to Italy, where he spent several pleasant weeks looking after some legal business for his friends, M. and Mme. Visconti. It was on his return from this journey that he learned of the death of Madame de Berny.

During this period of general depression, Balzac devoted a certain amount of attention to another correspondent, Louise, whom he never met but whose letters cheered him, especially during his imprisonment for refusing to serve in the Garde Nationale. In the same year (1836), he was drawn by the charming Madame de Valette to Guerande, where he secured his descriptive material for /Beatrix/.

In the spring of 1837, he went to Italy for the second time, hoping to recuperate, and wishing to see the bust of Madame Hanska which had been made by Bartolini. He visited several cities, and in Milan he was received in the salon of Madame Maffei, where he met some of the best known people of the day. He had now thought of another scheme by means of which he might become very rich,—always a favorite dream of his. He believed that much silver might be extracted from lead turned out of the mines as refuse, and was indiscreet enough to confide his ideas to a crafty merchant whom he met at Genoa. A year later, when Balzac went to Sardinia to investigate the possibility of the development of his plans, he found that his ideas had been appropriated by this acquaintance. On his return from this trip to Corsica and Sardinia, on which he had endured much physical suffering, and had spent much money to no financial avail, he stopped again at Milan to look after the interests of the Viscontis. In the Salon of the same year (1837), the famous portrait by Boulanger was displayed. About the same time, together with Theophile Gautier, Leon Gozlan, Jules Sandeau and others, he organized an association called the /Cheval Rouge/ for mutual advertisement.

Balzac now bought a piece of land at Ville d'Avray (Sevres), and had a house built, /Les Jardies/, which afforded much amusement to the Parisians. He went there to reside in 1838 while the walls were still damp. Here he formed another scheme for becoming rich, this time in the belief that he would be successful in raising pineapples at his new home. /Les Jardies/ was a three-story house. The principal stairway was on the outside, because an exterior staircase would not interfere with the symmetrical arrangement of the interior. The garden walls, not long after completion, fell down as they had no foundations, and Balzac sadly exclaimed over their giving way! After a brief residence here of about two years, he fled from his creditors and concealed his identity under the name of his housekeeper, Madame de Brugnolle, in a mysterious little house, No. 19, rue Basse, Passy.

Aside from his novels, which were appearing at a most rapid rate, Balzac wrote many plays, but they all met with failure for various reasons. Other literary activities, such as his brief directorship of the /Revue Parisienne/, numerous articles and short stories, and his cooperation in the /Societe des Gens-de-Lettres/, which was organized to protect the rights of authors and publishers, occupied much of his precious time; in addition, he had his unremitting financial struggles.

This "child-man," however, with his imagination, optimism, belief in magnetism and clairvoyance, and great steadfastness of character, kept on hoping. Not discouraged by his ever unsuccessful schemes for becoming a millionaire, he conceived the project of digging for hidden treasures, and later thought of making a fortune by transporting to France oaks grown in distant Russia.

In the spring of 1842 Balzac's novels were collected for the first time under the name of the /Comedie humaine/. This was shortly after one of the most important events of his life had occurred, when on January 5 he received a letter from Madame Hanska telling of the death of her husband the previous November. Balzac wished to leave for Russia immediately, but Madame Hanska's permission was not forthcoming, and it was not until July of 1843 that Balzac arrived at St. Petersburg to visit his "Polar Star."

On his return home he became very ill, and from this time onward his robust constitution, which he had so abused by overwork and by the use of strong coffee, began to break under the continual strain and his illnesses became more and more frequent. His visit to his /Chatelaine/, however, had increased his longing to be constantly in her society, and he was ever planning to visit her. During her prolonged stay in Dresden in the winter and spring of 1845, he became so desperate that he could not longer do his accustomed work, and when the invitation to visit her eventually came, he forgot all in his haste to be at her side.

With Madame Hanska, her daughter Anna, and the Count George Mniszech, Anna's fiance, Balzac now traveled extensively in Europe. In July, after some preliminary journeys, Madame Hanska and Anna secretly accompanied him to Paris where they enjoyed the opportunity of visiting Anna's former governess, Lirette, who had entered a convent. In August, after visiting many cities with the two ladies, Balzac escorted them as far as Brussels. In September he left Paris again to join them at Baden, and in October, went to meet them at Chalons whence all four—Count Mniszech being now of the party—journeyed to Marseilles and by sea to Naples. After a few days at Naples, Balzac returned to Paris, ill, having spent much money and done little work.

Ever planning a home for his future bride, and buying objects of art with which to adorn it, Balzac with his numerous worries was physically and mentally in poor condition. In March, 1846, he left Paris to join Madame Hanska and her party at Rome for a month. He traveled with them to some extent during the summer, and a definite engagement of marriage was entered into at Strasbourg. In October he attended the marriage of Anna and the Count Mniszech at Wiesbaden, and Madame Hanska visited him secretly in Paris during the winter.

He was now in better spirits, and his health was somewhat improved, enabling him to do some of his best work, but he was being pressed to fulfil his literary obligations, and, as usual, harassed over his debts. In September he left for Wierzchownia, where he remained until the following February, continually hoping that his marriage would soon take place. But Mme. Hanska hesitated, and the failure of the Chemin de Fer du Nord added more financial embarrassments to his already large load. The Revolution of 1848 brought him into more trouble still, and his health was obviously becoming impaired. Yet he continued hopeful.

After spending the summer in his house of treasure in the rue Fortunee, he again left, in September, 1848, for Wierzchownia, this time determined to return with his shield or upon it. During his prolonged stay of eighteen months, while his distraught mother was looking after affairs in his new home, his health became so bad that he could not finish the work outlined during the summer. No sooner had he recovered from one malady than he was overtaken by another. Unable to work, distracted by bad news from his family, and being the witness of several financial failures incurred by Madame Hanska, Balzac naturally was supremely depressed. At this time, a touch of what may not uncharitably be termed snobbishness is seen in his letters to his family when he extols the unlimited virtues of his /Predilecta/ and the Countess Anna.

After seventeen long years of waiting, with hope constantly deferred, Balzac at last attained his goal when, on March 14, 1850, Madame Hanska became Madame Honore de Balzac. His joy over this great triumph was beyond all adequate description, but he was unable to depart for Paris with his bride until April. After a difficult journey, the couple arrived at Paris in May, but the condition of Balzac's health was hopeless and only a few more months were accorded him. With his usual optimism, he always thought that he would be spared to finish his great work, and when informed by his physician on August 17 that he would live but a few hours, he refused to believe it.

Unless he had been self-centered, Balzac could never have left behind him his enormous and prodigious work. In spite of certain unlovely phases of his private character and failure to fulfil his literary and financial obligations, he was a man of great personal charm. Though at various times he was under consideration for election to the French Academy, his name is not found numbered among the "forty immortals." But he was the greatest of French novelists, a great creator of characters, who by some competent critics has been ranked with Shakespeare, and he has left to posterity the incomparable, though unfinished /Comedie humaine/, which is in itself sufficient for his "immortality."

CHAPTER II

RELATIVES AND FAMILY FRIENDS

BALZAC'S MOTHER

"Farewell, my dearly beloved mother! I embrace you with all my heart. Oh! if you knew how I need just now to cast myself upon your breast as a refuge of complete affection, you would insert a little word of tenderness in your letters, and this one which I am answering has not even a poor kiss. There is nothing but . . . Ah! Mother, Mother, this is very bad! . . . You have misconstrued what I said to you, and you do not understand my heart and affection. This grieves me most of all! . . ."

The above extract is sadly typical of a relationship of thirty years, 1820-1850, between a mother, on the one hand, who never understood or appreciated her son—and a son, on the other, whose longings for maternal affection were never fully gratified. To his mother Balzac dedicated /Le Medicin de Campagne/, one of his finest sociological studies.

Madame Surville has described Balzac's mother, and her own, as being rich, beautiful, and much younger than her husband, and as having a rare vivacity of mind and of imagination, an untiring activity, a great firmness of decision, and an unbounded devotion to her family; but as expressing herself in actions rather than in words. She devoted herself exclusively to the education of her children, and felt it necessary to use severity towards them in order to offset the effects of indulgence on the part of their father and their grandmother. Balzac inherited from his mother imagination and activity, and from both of his parents energy and kindness.

Madame de Balzac has been charged with not having been a tender mother towards her children in their infancy. She had lost her first child through her inability to nurse it properly. An excellent nurse, however, was found for Honore, and he became so healthy that later his sister Laure was placed with the same nurse. But she never seemed fully to understand her son nor even to suspect his promise. She attributed the sagacious remarks and reflections of his youth to accident, and on such occasions she would tell him that he did not understand what he was saying. His only reply would be a sweet, submissive smile which irritated her, and which she called arrogant and presumptuous. With her cold, calculating temperament, she had no patience with his staking his life and fortune on uncertain financial undertakings, and blamed him for his business failures. She suffered on account of his love of luxury and his belief in his own greatness, no evidence of which seemed sufficient to her matter-of-fact mind. She continued to misjudge him, unaware of his genius, but in spite of her grumbling and harassing disposition, she often came to his aid in his financial troubles.

Contrary to the wishes of his parents, who had destined him to become a notary, Balzac was ever dreaming of literary fame. His mother not unnaturally thought that a little poverty and difficulty would bring him to submission; so, before leaving Paris for Villeparisis in 1819 she installed him in a poorly furnished /mansard/, No. 9, rue Lesdiguieres, leaving an old woman, Madame Comin, who had been in the service of the family for more than twenty years, to watch over him. Balzac has doubtless depicted this woman in /Facino Cane/ as Madame Vaillant, who in 1819-1820 was charged with the care of a young writer, lodged in a /mansard/, rue Lesdiguieres.

After fifteen months of this life, his health became so much impaired that his mother insisted on keeping him at home, where she cared for him faithfully. On a former occasion Madame de Balzac had had her son brought home to recuperate, for when he was sent away to /college/ at an early age, his health became so impaired that he was hurriedly returned to his home. Balzac probably refers to this event in his life when he writes, in /Louis Lambert/, that the mother, alarmed by the continuous fever of her son and his symptoms of /coma/, took him from school at four or five hours' notice.

During the five years (1820-1825) that Balzac remained at home in Villeparisis, he longed for the quiet freedom of his garret; he could not adapt himself to the bustling family circle, nor reconcile himself to the noise of the domestic machinery kept in motion by his vigilant and indefatigable mother. She was of a nervous, excitable nature, which she probably inherited from her mother, Madame Sallambier. She imagined that he was ill, and of course there was no one to convince her to the contrary. Had she known that while she thought she was contributing everything to the happiness of those around her, she was only doing the opposite, we may be sure that she of all women would have been the most wretched.

Balzac having failed in his speculations as publisher and printer, was aided by his mother financially, and she figured as one of his principal creditors during the remainder of his life. (E. Faguet in /Balzac/, is exaggerating in stating that Madame de Balzac sacrificed her whole fortune for Honore, for much of her means was spent on her favorite son, Henri.)

M. Auguste Fessart was a contemporary of the family, an observer of a great part of the life of Honore, and his confidant on more than one occasion. In his /Commentaires/ on the work entitled /Balzac, sa Vie et ses Oeuvres/, by Madame Surville, he states that the portrait of Madame de Balzac is flattering—a daughter's portrait of a mother—and declares that Madame de Balzac was very severe with her children, especially with Honore, adding that Balzac used to say that he never heard his mother speak without experiencing a certain trembling which deprived him of his faculties. Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, in reviewing the /Commentaires/ of M. Fessart, notes the recurring instances in which pity is expressed for the moral and material sufferings almost constantly endured by Balzac in his family circle. These sufferings seem to have impressed him more than anything else in the career of the novelist. In speaking of Balzac's financial appeal to his family, M. Fessart notes: "And his mother did not respond to him. She let him die of hunger! . . . I repeat that they let him die of hunger; he told me so several times!" When Madame Surville speaks of their keeping Balzac's presence in Paris a secret, saying that it was moreover a means of keeping him from all worldly temptations, M. Fessart replies: "And of giving him nothing, and of allowing him to be in need of everything!" Finally, when Madame Surville speaks of her parents' not giving Balzac the fifteen hundred francs he desired, M. Fessart confirms this, saying that his family always refused him money.

A letter from Balzac to Madame Hanska testifies to this attitude of his family towards him: "In 1828 I was cast into this poor rue Cassini, in consequence of a liquidation to which I had been compelled, owing one hundred thousand francs and being without a penny, when my family would not even give me bread."

MM. Hanotaux et Vicaire, to whose admirable work we shall have occasion to refer often, state that Madame de Balzac advanced thirty- seven thousand six hundred francs for Balzac on August 16, 1822, and that his parents paid a total of forty-five thousand francs for him.

Having read M. Fessart's description of Madame de Balzac, one can agree with Madame Ruxton in saying that Balzac has portrayed his own youth in his account of the early life of Raphael in /La Peau de Chagrin/, Balzac's mother, instead of Raphael's father, being recognized in the following passage:

"Seen from afar, my life appears to contract by some mental process. That long, slow agony of ten years' duration can be brought to memory to-day in some few phrases, in which pain is resolved into a mere idea, and pleasure becomes a philosophical reflection . . . When I left school, my father submitted me to a strict discipline; he installed me in a room near his own study, and I had to rise at five in the morning and retire at nine at night. He intended me to take my law studies seriously. I attended school, and read with an advocate as well; but my lectures and work were so narrowly circumscribed by the laws of time and space, and my father required of me such a strict account, at dinner, that . . . In this manner I cowered under as strict a despotism as a monarch's until I became of age."

In confirmation of this idea, Madame Ruxton[*] quotes Madame Barnier, granddaughter of the Duchesse d'Abrantes, who knew both Balzac and his mother, and who describes her as a cold, severe, superior, but hard- hearted woman, just the opposite of her son. Balzac himself states: "Never shall I cease to resemble Raphael in his garret."

[*] In /La Dilecta de Balzac/, Balzac states that he has described his own life in /La Peau de Chagrin/. For a picture of Balzac's unhappy childhood drawn by himself, see /Revue des deux Mondes/, March 15, 1920.

After the death (June 1829) of her husband, Madame de Balzac lived with her son at different intervals, and during his extended tour of six months in 1832 she attended to the details of his business. With her usual energy and extreme activity, she displayed her ability in various lines, for she had to have dealings with his publisher, do copying, consult the library,—sending him some books and buying others,—have the servant exercise the horses, sell the horses and carriage and dismiss the servant, arrange to have certain payments deferred, send him money and consult the physician for him, not to mention various other duties.

While Madame de Balzac was certainly requested to do far more than a son usually expects of his mother, her tantalizing letters were a source of great annoyance to him, as is seen in the following:

"What you say about my silence is one of those things which, to use your expression, makes me grasp my heart with both hands; for it is incredible I should be able to produce all I do. (I am obeying the most rigorous necessity); so if I am to write, I ought to have more time, and when I rest, I wish to lay down and not take up my pen again. Really, my poor dear mother, this ought to be understood between us once for all; otherwise, I shall have to renounce all epistolary intercourse. . . . And this morning I was about to make the first dash at my work, when your letter came and completely upset me. Do you think it possible to have artistic inspirations after being brought suddenly face to face with such a picture of my miseries as you have traced? Do you think that if I did not feel them, I should work as I do? . . . Farewell, my good mother. Try and achieve impossibilities, which is what I am doing on my side. My life is one perpetual miracle. . . . You ask me to write you in full detail; but, my dear mother, have you yet to be told what my existence is? When I am able to write, I work at my manuscripts; when I am not working at my manuscripts, I am thinking of them; I never have any rest. How is it my friends are not aware of this? . . . I beg of you, my dear mother, in the name of my heavy work, never to write me that such a work is good, and such another bad: you upset me for a fortnight."

Balzac appreciated what his mother did for him, and while he never fully repaid her the money she had so often requested of him, she might have felt herself partially compensated by these kind words of affection:

"My kind and excellent mother,—After writing to you in such haste, I felt my inmost heart melt as I read your letter again, and I worshipped you. How shall I return to you, when shall I return to you, and can I ever return to you, by my love and endeavors for your happiness, all that you have done for me? I can at present only express my deep thankfulness. . . . How deep is my gratitude towards the kind hearts who pluck some of the thorns from my life and smooth my path by their affection. But constrained to an unceasing warfare against destiny, I have not always leisure to give utterance to what I feel. I would not, however, allow a day to pass without letting you know the tenderness your late proofs of devotion excite in me. A mother suffers the pangs of labor more than once with her children, does she not, my mother? Poor mothers, are you ever enough beloved! . . . I hope, my much beloved mother, you will not let yourself grow dejected. I work as hard as it is possible for a man to work; a day is only twelve hours long, I can do no more. . . . Farewell, my darling mother; I am very tired! Coffee burns my stomach. For the last twenty days I have taken no rest; and yet I must still work on, that I may remove your anxieties. . . . Keep your house; I had already sent an answer to Laura, I will not let either you or Surville bear the burden of my affairs. However, until the arrival of my proxy, it is understood that Laura, who is my cash keeper, will remit you a hundred and fifty francs a month. You may reckon on this as a regular payment; nothing in the world will take precedence of it. Then, at the end of November to December 10, you will have the surplus of thirty-six thousand francs to reimburse you for the excess of the expenditure over the receipts during the time of your stewardship; during which, thanks to your devotion, you gave me all the tranquility that was possible. . . . I entreat you to take care of yourself! Nothing is so dear to me as your health! I would give half of myself to keep you well, and I would keep the other half, to do you service. My mother, the day when we shall be happy through me is coming quickly; I am beginning to gather the fruits of the sacrifices I have made this year for a more certain future. Still, a few months more and I shall be able to give you that happy life—that life without cares or anxiety—which you so much need. You will have all you desire; our little vanities will be satisfied no less than the great ambitions of our hearts. Oh do, I pray you, nurse yourself! . . . Your comfort in material things and your happiness are my riches. Oh! my dear mother, do live to see my bright future realized!"[*]

[*] In speaking of Balzac's relations to his mother, Mr. F. Lawton (/Balzac/) states: "Madame Balzac was sacrificed to his improvidence and stupendous egotism; nor can the tenderness of the language—more frequently than not called forth by some fresh immolation of her comfort to his interests—disguise this unpleasing side of his character and action. . . . And his epistolary good-byes were odd mixtures of business with sentiment."

Thus did the poor mother alternately receive letters full of scoldings and of terms of endearment from her son whose genius she never understood. She was faithful in her duties, and her ambitious son probably did not realize how much he was asking of her. But she may have had a motive in keeping him on the prolonged visit during which this last letter was written, for she was interested in his prospective marriage. Although her full name is never mentioned, the women in question, Madame D——, was evidently a widow with a fortune, and in view of this prospect was most pleasing to Madame de Balzac. However, this matrimonial plan fell through, and Balzac himself was never enthusiastic over it. He felt that his attentions to Madame D—— would consume his very precious time, and that the affair could not come off in time to serve his interests. Could it be that Balzac was alluding to this same Madame D—— when he wrote some time later: "My beloved mother,—the affair has come to nothing, the bird was frightened away, and I am very glad of it. I had no time to run after it, and it was imperative it should be either yes or no."

This marriage project, like many others planned either for or by Balzac, came to naught, and his mother evidently became displeased with him, for she left him on his return, when he was in great need of consolation and sympathy. As frequently happened under such circumstances, Balzac expressed his deep regrets at his mother's conduct to one of his best friends, Madame Carraud, and confided to her his loneliness and longings.

Madame de Balzac was much occupied with religious ideas, and had made a collection of the writings of the mystics. Balzac plunged into the study of clairvoyance and mesmerism, and his mother, interested in the marvelous, helped him in his studies, as she knew many of the celebrated clairvoyants and mesmerists of the time.

At various times, Balzac's relations with his mother were much estranged; at one time he did not even know where she was. When she was disappointed in her favorite child, Henri, she seemed to recognize the great wrong involved in her lack of affection for Honore and his sister Laure. But she never gave him the attentions that he longed for. In May, 1840, he wrote to Madame Hanska that he was especially sad on the day of his /fete catholique/ (May 16) as, since the death of Madame de Berny, there was no one to observe this occasion, though during her life every day was a /fete/ day; he was too busy to join with his sister Laure in the mutual observance of their birthdays, and his mother cared little for him; once the Duchesse de Castries had sent him a most beautiful bouquet,—but now there was no one.

The same year (1840) he took his mother to live with him /Aux jardies/. This he regarded as an additional burden. Her continual harassing him for the money he still owed her, her nervous and discordant disposition, her constant intrigues to force him to marry, and her numerous little acts that placed him in positions beneath the dignity of an author's standing were an incessant source of annoyance to him.

She did not remain with him long, but he tried to perform his filial duties and make her comfortable, as various letters show. One of these reads as follows:

"My dear Mother,—It is very difficult for me to enter into the engagement you ask of me, and to do so without reflection would entail consequences most serious both for you and for myself. The money necessary for my existence is, as it were, wrung from what should go to pay my debts, and hard work it is to get it. The sort of life I lead is suitable for no one; it wears out relations and friends; all fly from my dreary house. My affairs will become more and more difficult to manage, not to say impossible. The failure of my play, as regards money, still further complicates my situation. I find it impossible to work in the midst of all the little storms raised up in a household where the members do not live in harmony. My work has become feeble during the last year, as any one can see. I am in doubt what to do. But I must come to some determination within a few days. When my furniture has been sold, and when I have disposed of 'Les Jardies,' I shall not have much left. And I shall find myself alone in the world with nothing but my pen, and an attic. In such a situation shall I be able to do more for you than I am doing at this moment? I shall have to live from hand to mouth by writing articles which I can no longer write with the agility of youth which is no more. The world, and even relations, mistake me; I am engrossed by my work, and they think I am absorbed in myself. I am not blind to the fact, that up to the present moment, working as I work, I have not succeeded in paying my debts, nor in supporting myself. No future will save me. I must do something else, look out for some other position. And it is at a time like this that you ask me to enter into an engagement! Two years ago I should have done so, and have deceived myself. Now all I can say is, come to me and share my crust. You were in a tolerable position; I had a domestic whose devotion spared you all the worry of housekeeping; you were not called on to enter into every detail, you were quiet and peaceful. You wished me to count for something in your life, when it was imperative for you to forget my existence and allow me the entire liberty without which I can do nothing. It is not a fault in you, it is the nature of women. Now everything is changed. If you wish to come back, you will have to bear a little of the burden which is about to weigh me down, and which hitherto has only pressed upon you because you chose to take it to yourself. All this is business, and in no way involves my affection for you, which is always the same; so believe in the tenderness of your devoted son."

Later, when Balzac purchased his home in the rue Fortunee, his mother had the care of it while he was in Russia. He asked her to visit the house weekly and to keep the servants on the alert by enquiring as though she expected him; yet Balzac wrote his nieces to have their grandmother visit them often, lest she carry too far the duties she imposed on herself in looking after his little home. He cautioned her to allow no one to enter the house, to insist that his old servant Francois be discreet, and especially that she be prudent in not talking about his plans; and that by all means she should take a carriage while attending to his affairs; this request was not only from him but also from Madame Hanska.

She was most faithful in looking after his home and watching the workmen to see that his instructions were carried out. In fact, she never left the house except when, on one occasion, owing to the excessive odors of the paint, she spent two nights in Laure's home.

Balzac's stay at Wierzchownia, however, was far from tranquil, for his mother was discontented with the general aspect of his affairs and increased his vexations by writing a letter in which she addressed him as /vous/, declaring that her affection was conditional on his behavior, a thing he naturally resented. "To think," he writes, "of a mother reserving the right to love a son like me, seventy-two years on the one side, and fifty on the other!"

This letter caused a serious complication in his affairs in Russia, but the mother evidently became reconciled for a few months later she wrote to him expressing her joy at the news of his recovery, and asking him to extend to his friends her most sincere thanks for their care of him in his serious illness. Aside from knowing of his illness and her inability to see him, she was most happy in feeling that he was with such good friends.

She complained of his not writing oftener, but he replied that he had written to her seven times during his absence, that the letters were posted by his hostess and that he did not wish to abuse the hospitality with which he was so royally and magnificently entertained. He resented his mother's dictating to him, a man of fifty years of age, as to how often he should write to his nieces, for while he enjoyed receiving their letters, he thought they should feel honored in receiving letters from him whenever he had time to write to them.

When the poor mother attempted to be gracious to her son by sending him a box of bonbons, she only brought him trouble, for she packed it in newspapers, and in passing the custom-house, it was taken out and the candy crushed. Instead of thanking her for her good intentions, he rebuked her for her stupidity in regard to sending printed matter into Russia, as it endangered his stay there.

Balzac was always striving to pay his mother his long-standing indebtedness, but the Revolution of 1848, in connection with his continued illness, made this impossible. This burden of debt was also, at this time, preventing his obtaining a successful termination of his mission to Russia, for, as he explained to his mother, the lady concerned did not care to marry him while he was still encumbered with debt. Being a woman past forty, she desired that nothing should disturb the tranquillity in which she wished to live.

Owing to this critical situation and to his poor health, Balzac had repeatedly requested his mother never to write depressing news to him, but she paid little attention to this request and sent him a letter hinting at trouble in so vague a manner and with such disquieting expressions that, in his extremely nervous condition, it might have proved fatal to him. Yet it did not affect him so seriously as it did Madame Hanska, who read the letter to him, for owing to his terrible illness and the method of treatment, his eyes had become so weak that he could no longer see in the evening. Madame Hanska was so deeply interested in everything that concerned Balzac that this news made her very ill. For them to live in suspense for forty days without knowing anything definite was far worse than it would have been had his mother enumerated in detail the various misfortunes. From the preceding revelations of the disposition of Madame de Balzac, one can easily understand how it happened that her son has immortalized some of her traits in the character of /Cousine Bette/.

During the remainder of Balzac's stay in the Ukraine, he was preoccupied with the thought of his mother having every possible comfort, with his becoming acclimatized in Russia,—impossible though it was for him in his condition,—and above all with the realization of his long-cherished hope. But he cautioned his mother to observe the greatest discretion in regard to this hope, "for such things are never certain until one leaves the church after the ceremony."

What must have been his feeling of triumph when he was able to write:

"My very dear Mother,—Yesterday, at seven in the morning, thanks be to God, my marriage was blessed and celebrated in the church of Saint Barbara, at Berditchef, by the deputy of the Bishop of Jitomir. Monseigneur wished to have married me himself, but being unable, he sent a holy priest, the Count Abbe Czarouski, the eldest of the glories of the Polish Roman Catholic Church, as his representative. Madame Eve de Balzac, your daughter-in-law, in order to make an end of all obstacles, has taken an heroic and sublimely maternal resolution, viz., to give up all her fortune to her children, only reserving an annuity to herself. . . . There are now two of us to thank you for all the good care you have taken of our house, as well as to testify to you our respectful /tendresses/."

Balzac was not only anxious that his bride should be properly received, but also that his mother should preserve her dignity. On their way home he writes her from Dresden to have the house ready for their arrival (May 19, 20, 21), urging that she go either to her own home or to Laure's, for it would not be proper for her to receive her daughter-in-law in the rue Fortunee, and that she should not call until his wife had called on her. After reminding her again not to forget to procure flowers, he suggests that owing to his extremely feeble health he meet her at Laure's, for there he would have one less flight of stairs to climb. These suggestions, however, were unnecessary, as his mother had been ill in bed for several weeks in Laure's house.

After the novelist's return to Paris with his bride, his physical condition was such that in spite of the efforts of his beloved physician, Dr. Nacquart, little could be done for him, and he was destined to pass away within a short time. Balzac's mother, she with whom he had had so many misunderstandings, she who had doubtless never fully appreciated his greatness but who had sacrificed her physical strength and worldly goods for his sake, an old woman of almost seventy-two years, showed her true maternal love by remaining with her glorious and immortal son in his last moments.

MADAME SURVILLE—MADAME MALLET—MADAME DUHAMEL

"To the Casket containing all things delightful; to the Elixir of
Virtue, of Grace, and of Beauty; to the Gem, to the Prodigy of all
Normandy; to the Pearl of the Bayeux; to the Fairy of St.
Laurence; to the Madonna of the Rue Teinture; to the Guardian
Angel of Caen, to the Goddess of Enchanting Spells; to the
Treasury of all Friendship—to Laura!"

Two years younger than Balzac, his sister Laure, not only played an important part in his life, but after his death rendered valuable service by writing his life and publishing a part of his correspondence.[*] Being reared by the same nurse as he, and having had the same home environment, she was the first of his intimate companions, and throughout a large part of his life remained one of the most sympathetic of all his confidantes. As children they loved each other tenderly, and his chivalrous protection of her led to his being punished more than once without betraying her childish guilt. Once when she arrived in time to confess, he asked her to avow nothing the next time, as he liked to be scolded for her.

[*] MM. Hanotaux et Vicaire, /Le Jeunesse de Balzac/, have correctly observed that Balzac's sister, Madame Surville, has written a most delicate and interesting book, but that she had not correctly portrayed her brother because she was blinded by her devotion to him.

He it was who accompanied her to dances, but having had the misfortune to slip and fall on one such occasion he was so sensitive to the amused smiles of the ladies that he gave up dancing, and decided to dominate society otherwise than by the graces and talents of the drawing-room. Thus it was that he became merely a spectator of these festivities, the memory of which he utilized later.

It was to Laure that, in the strictest confidence, he sent the plan of his first work, the tragedy /Cromwell/, writing it to be a surprise to the rest of the family when finished. To her he looked for moral support, asking her to have faith in him, for he needed some one to believe in him. To her also he confided his ambitions early in his career, saying that his two greatest desires were to be famous and to be loved.

Laure was married in May, 1820, to M. Midi de la Greneraye Surville, and moved from her home in Villeparisis to Bayeux. When she became homesick Balzac wrote her cheerful letters, suggesting various means of employing her time. His admiration of her was such that he even asked her to select for him a wife of her own type. He explained to her that his affection was not diminished an atom by distance or by silence, for there are torrents which make a terrible to-do and yet their beds are dry in a few days, and there are waters which flow quietly, but flow forever.

Madame Surville seems to have been the impersonation of discretion and appreciation; she was intimately acquainted with all the characters in his work and made valuable suggestions; he was most happy when discussing plans with her. He longed to have his glory reflect on his family and make the name of Balzac illustrious. When carried away with some beautiful idea, he seemed to hear her tender voice encouraging him. he felt that were it not for her devotion to the duties of her home, their intimacy might have become even more precious and that stimulated by a literary atmosphere she might herself have become a writer.

He consulted her frequently with regard to literary help, once asking her to use all her cleverness in writing out fully her ideas on the subject of the /Deux Rencontres/, about which she had told him, for he wished to insert them in the /Femme de trente Ans/. As early as 1822 she received a similar request asking her to prepare for him a manuscript of the /Vicaire des Ardennes/; she was to prepare the first volume and he would finish it. And many years later (1842), Balzac asked his sister to furnish him with ideas for a story for young people. After the name of this story had been changed a few times, it was published under the title of /Un Debut dans la Vie/. This explains why Balzac used the following words in dedicating it to her: "To Laure. May the brilliant and modest intellect that gave me the subject of this scene have the honor of it!" This, however, was not the first time he had honored her by dedicating one of his works to her, for in 1835 he inscribed to "Almae Sorori" a short story, /Les Proscrits/.

Balzac was often depressed, and felt that even his own family was not in sympathy with his efforts; he told his sister that the universe would be startled at his works before his relations or friends would believe in their existence. Yet he knew that they did appreciate him to a certain extent, for his sister wrote him that in reading the /Recherche de l'Absolu/, and thinking that her own brother was the author of it, she wept for joy.

In his youth, at all events, Balzac seems to have had no secrets from his sister, and it is to her that the much disputed letter of Saturday, October 12, 1833, was addressed. Their friendship was sincere and devoted; and yet there were coolnesses, caused largely by the influence of their mother,—and of M. Surville, whose jealous and tyrannical disposition prevented their seeing each other as frequently as they would have liked. She once celebrated her birthday by visiting her brother, but she held her watch in her hand as she had only twenty minutes for the meeting. For awhile, he could not visit her; later, this estrangement was overcome, and after the first presentation of his play /Vautrin/ (1840), his sister cared for him in her home during his illness.

Madame Surville performed many duties for her brother but was not always skilful in allaying the demands of his creditors. On Balzac's return from a visit to Madame Hanska in Vienna, he found that his affairs were in great disorder, and that his sister, frightened at the conditions, had pawned his silverware. In planning at a later date to leave France, however, he did not hesitate to entrust his treasures to his sister, saying that she would be a most faithful "dragon." He was also wisely thoughtful of her; on one occasion when she had gone to a masked ball contrary to her husband's wishes, Balzac went after her and took her home without giving her time to go round the room.

She evidently had more influence over their mother than had he, for he asked her when on the verge of taking Madame de Balzac into his home again, to assist him in making her reasonable:

"If she likes, she can be very happy, but tell her that she must encourage happiness and not frighten it away. She will have near her a confidential attendant and a servant, and that she will be taken care of in the way she likes. Her room is as elegant as I can make it. . . . Make her promise not to object to what I wish her to do as regards her dress: I do not wish her to be dressed otherwise than as she /ought to be/, it would give me great pain . . ."

During his prolonged stay in Russia, he requested his sister to conceal from their mother the true condition of his illness and the uncertainty of his marriage, and to entreat her to avoid anything in her letters which might cause him pain. Feeling that she would never have allowed such a thing had she known of it, he informed her in detail concerning their mother's letter which had caused him endless trouble.

While Madame Surville was a great stimulus to Balzac early in his literary career, she in turn received the deepest sympathy from him in her financial struggle, and, while he was so happy and was living in such luxury in Russia, he only regretted that he could not assist her, for he had enjoyed hospitality in her home.

Madame Surville had at least one of her mother's traits—that of continually harassing Balzac by trying to marry him to some rich woman; once she had even chosen for him the goddaughter of Louis- Philippe. But the most serious breach of relations between the two resulted from her failure to approve of Balzac's adoration of Madame Hanska. While admitting the extreme beauty of the celebrated Daffinger portrait, she was jealous of his /Predilecta/. When she saw the bound proofs of /La Femme superieure/ which he had intended for Madame Hanska, she felt that she was being neglected. In the end, he robbed his /Chatelaine/ to the profit of his /cara sorella/. But when she became impatient at Balzac's prolonged stay at Wierzchownia, he resented it, explaining that marriage is like cream—a change of atmosphere would spoil it,—that bad marriages could be made with the utmost ease, but good ones required infinite precautions and scrupulous attention. He tried to make her see the advantage of this marriage, writing her:

"Consider, dear Laura, none of us are as yet, so to speak, /arrived/; if, instead of being obliged to work in order to live, I had become the husband of one of the cleverest, the best-born, and best-connected of women, who is also possessed of a solid though circumscribed fortune, in spite of the wish of the lady to live retired, to have no intercourse even with the family, I should still be in a position to be much better able to be of use to you all. I have the certainty of the warm kindness and lively interest which Madame Hanska takes in the dear children. Thus it is more than a duty in my mother, and all belonging to me, to do nothing to hinder me from the happy accomplishment of a union which /before all is my happiness/. Again, it must not be forgotten that this lady is illustrious, not only on account of her high descent, but for her great reputation for wit, beauty, and fortune (for she is credited with all the millions of her daughter); she is constantly receiving proposals of marriage from men of the highest rank and position. But she is something far better than rich and noble; she is exquisitely good, with the sweetness of an angel, and of an easy compatibility in daily life which every day surprises me more and more; she is, moreover, thoroughly pious. Seeing all these great advantages, the world treats my hopes with something of mocking incredulity, and my prospects of success are denied and derided on all sides. If we were all to live . . . under the same roof, I could conceive the difficulties raised by my mother about her dignity; but to keep on the terms which are due to a lady who brings with her (fortune apart) most precious social advantages, I think you need only confine yourself to giving her the impression that my relations are kind and affectionate amongst themselves, and kindly affectionate towards the man she loves. It is the only way to excite her interest and to preserve her influence, which will be enormous. You may all of you, in a great fit of independence, say you have no need of any one, that you intend to succeed by your own exertions. But, between ourselves, the events of the last few years must have proved to you that nothing can be done without the help of others; and the social forces that we can least afford to dispense with are those of our own family. Come, Laura, it is something to be able, in Paris, to open one's /salon/ and to assemble all the /elite/ of society, presided over by a woman who is refined, polished, imposing as a queen, of illustrious descent, allied to the noblest families, witty, well-informed, and beautiful; there is a power of social domination. To enter into any struggle whatever with a woman in whom so much influence centers is—I tell you this in confidence—an act of insanity. Let there be neither servility, nor sullen pride, nor susceptibility, nor too much compliance; nothing but good natural affection. This is the line of conduct prescribed by good sense towards such a woman."

One can see how Madame Surville would resent such a letter, especially when she might have arranged another marriage, advantageous and sensible, for him. But poor Balzac, knowing her interest in his happiness, writes to her a joyful letter the day after his marriage: "As to Madame de Balzac, what more can I say about her? I may be envied for having won her: with the exception of her daughter, there is no woman in this land who can compare with her. She is indeed the diamond of Poland, the gem of this illustrious house of Rzewuski." After explaining to her that this was a marriage of pure affection, as his wife had given her fortune to her children and wished to live only for them and for him, Balzac tells his sister that he hoped to present Madame Honore de Balzac to her soon, signing the letter, "Your brother Honore at the summit of happiness."

A great attraction for Balzac in the home of Madame Surville were his two nieces, Sophie and Valentine, to whom he was devoted, and with whom he frequently spent his evenings. The story is told that one evening on entering his sister's home, he asked for paper and pencil, which were given him. After spending about an hour, not in making notes, as one might imagine, but in writing columns of figures and adding them, he discovered that he owed fifty-nine thousand francs, and exclaimed that his only recourse was to blow his brains out, or throw himself into the Seine! When questioned by his niece Sophie in tears as to whether he would not finish the novel he had begun for her, he declared that he was wrong in becoming so discouraged, to work for her would be a pleasure; he would no longer be depressed, but would finish her book, which would be a masterpiece, sell it for three thousand /ecus/, pay all his creditors within two years, amass a dowry for her and become a peer of France!

Balzac had forbidden his nieces to read his books, promising to write one especially for them. The book referred to here is /Ursule Mirouet/ which he dedicated to Sophie as follows:

"To Mademoiselle Sophie Surville.

"It is a real pleasure, my dear niece, to dedicate to you a book of which the subject and the details have gained the approbation—so difficult to secure—of a young girl to whom the world is yet unknown, and who will make no compromise with the high principles derived from a pious education. You young girls are a public to be dreaded; you ought never to be permitted to read any books less pure than your own pure souls, and you are forbidden certain books, just as you are not allowed to see society as it really is. Is it not enough, then, to make a writer proud, to know that he has satisfied you? Heaven grant that affection may not have misled you! Who can say? The future only, which you, I hope, will see, though he may not, who is your uncle "BALZAC."

To Valentine Surville he dedicated /La Paix du Menage/.

The novelist was interested in helping his sister find suitable husbands for her daughters. He and Sophie had a wager as to which—she or he—would marry first; so when Balzac finally reached his own long- sought goal, he did not forget to remind his niece that she owed him a wedding gift.

Sophie became an accomplished musician, having for her master Ambroise Thomas. Balzac spoke very lovingly of Valentine during her early childhood; but she was so attractive that he feared she would be spoiled. And spoiled she was, or perhaps naturally inclined to indolence, for he wrote her a few years later:

"I should be very glad to learn that Valentine studies as much as the young Countess, who, besides all her other studies, practices daily at her piano. The success of this education is owing to hard work, which Miss Valentine shuns a little too much. Now, I say to my dear niece that to do nothing except what we feel inclined to do is the origin of all deterioration, especially in women. Rules obeyed and duties fulfilled have been the law of the young Countess from childhood, although she is an only child and a rich heiress. . . . Thus I beg Valentine not to exhibit a Creole /nonchalance/; but to listen to the advice of her sister, to impose tasks on herself, and to do work of various sorts, without neglecting the ordinary and daily cares of the household, and, above all, constantly to withstand the inclination we all have, more or less, to give ourselves up to what we find pleasant; it is by this yielding to inclination that we deteriorate and fall into misfortune."

While Balzac was living in Wierzchownia, he urged his nieces to write to him oftener, as the young Countess Anna took the greatest interest in their chatter; they were like two nightingales coming by post to enchant the Ukrainian solitude. He had portrayed them so well that all took an interest in them, and their letters were called for first whenever he received a package from Paris. He requested them to send him certain favorite recipes, and planned to have Sophie play with the young countess.

Sophie seemed to have some of the traits of her grandmother; for the novelist wrote his sister:

"Sophie has traced out a catechism of what she considers /my duties/ towards you, just as last year my mother wrote me a catechism of my duties towards my nieces; it is a sort of cholera peculiar to our family, to lecture uncles both at home and abroad. I make fun if it, but all these little things are remarked upon, which I do not like; then these blank pages make me furious. I forgive Sophie on account of the /motif/, which is you, and for all she and Valentine have done for your /fete/. Ah! if my wishes are ever realized, how I shall enjoy introducing my dear nieces, both so unspoiled by the devil! I have sung their praises here. I have said Sophie is a great musician: I add, Valentine is a /man of letters/, and she is tired with writing three pages."

If certain letters received by Balzac from his family irritated him, he perhaps unconsciously was making his sister jealous by continually extolling the young Countess Mniszech:

"She has a genius, as well as a love, for music; if she had not been an heiress, she would have been a great artiste. If she comes to Paris in eighteen months or two years, she will take lessons in thorough bass and composition. It is all she needs as regards music. She has (without exaggeration) hands the size of a child of eight years old. These minute, supple, white hands, three of which I could hold in mine, have an iron power of finger, in the proportion, like that of Liszt. The keys, not the fingers, bend; she can compass ten keys by the span and elasticity of her fingers; this phenomenon must be seen to be believed. Music, her mother, and her husband: these three words sum up her character. She is the Fenella of the fireside; the will-o'-wisp of our souls; our gaiety; the life of the house. When she is not here, the very walls are conscious of her absence—so much does she brighten them by her presence. She had never known misfortune; she knows nothing of annoyance; she is the idol of all who surround her, and she had the sensibility and goodness of an angel: in one word, she unites qualities which moralists consider incompatible; it is, however, only a self-evident fact to all who know her. She is evidently well informed, without pedantry; she has a delightful /naivete/; and though long since married, she has still the gaiety of a child, loving laughter like a little girl, which does not prevent her from possessing a religious enthusiasm for great objects. Physically, she has a grace even more beautiful than beauty, which triumphs over a complexion still somewhat brown (she is hardly sixteen);[*] a nose well formed, but not striking, except in the profile; a charming figure, supple and /svelte/; feet and hands exquisitely formed, and wonderfully small, as I have just mentioned. All these advantages are, moreover, thrown into relief by a proud bearing, full of race, by an air of distinction and ease which all queens have not, and which is now quite lost in France, where everybody wishes to be equal. This exterior—this air of distinction—this look of a /grande dame/, is one of the most precious gifts which God—the God of women can bestow. The Countess Georges speaks four languages as if she were a native of each of the countries whose tongue she knows so thoroughly. She has a keenness of observation which astonishes me; nothing escapes her. She is besides extremely prudent; and entirely to be relied on in daily intercourse. There are no words to describe her, but /perle fine/. Her husband adores her; I adore her; two cousins on the point of /old-maidism/ adore her—she will always be adored, as fresh reasons for loving her continually arise."

[*] For the incorrectness of this statement, see the chapter on the
Countess Mniszech.

Such adoration of Madame Hanska's daughter was enough to make Madame Surville jealous, especially when she was so despondent over her financial situation, but Balzac tried to cheer her thus: "You should be proud of your two children, they have written two charming letters, which have been much admired here. Two such daughters are the reward of your life; you can afford to accept many misfortunes."[*]

[*] Sophie Surville, the older daughter, whose matrimonial possibilities were so much discussed, was finally unhappily married to M. Mallet. She was a good harpist, and taught the harp. She died without issue. Valentine was married, 1859, to M. Louis Duhamel, a lawyer. She had a good voice for singing and literary talent; she took charge of having Balzac's correspondence published. She had two children; a daughter who became Mme. Pierre Carrier-Belleuse, wife of an artist, and a son, /publiciste distingue/. Laurence de Balzac had two sons; the older Alfred de Montzaigle, dissipated, a friend of Musset, died in 1852 without issue. The younger son, Alfonse, married Mlle. Caroline Jung; he died in 1868 at Strasbourg. Of their three children, only one, Paul de Montzaigle, lived. M. Surville-Duhamel, Mme. Pierre Carrier-Belleuse, and M. de Montzaigle are the only living relatives of Balzac. Mme. Belleuse and M. de Montzaigle have each a little daughter.

MADAME SALLAMBIER—MADAME DE MONTZAIGLE—MADAME DE BRUGNOLLE— MADAME DELANNOY—MADAME DE POMMEREUL—MADAME DE MARGONNE

"Ah we are fine specimens in this blessed family of ours! What a
pity we can't put ourselves into novels."

Another member of Balzac's family circle was his affectionate and amiable grandmother, whom he loved from childhood. After her husband's death, Madame Sallambier lived with her daughter, Madame de Balzac. She seems to have had a kind disposition, and having the requisite means, she could indulge Honore in various ways. When he was brought back from /college/ in wretched health, she condemned the schools for their neglect.

While studying at home, Balzac frequently spent his evenings playing whist or Boston with her. Through voluntary inattention or foolish plays, she allowed him to win money which he used to buy books. Throughout his life he loved these games in memory of her. she encouraged him in his writings, and when /L'Heritiere de Birague/ was sold for eight hundred francs, he was sure of the sale of the /first/ copy, for she had promised to buy it. He was devoted to her, and when he had neglected writing to her for some time, he atoned by sending to her a most affectionate letter.

After the marriage of his sister Laure, Balzac kept her informed in detail concerning the family life. Of his grandmother, we find the following:

"Grandmamma begs me to say all the pretty things she would write if that unfortunate malady did not rob her of all her facilities! Nevertheless she begins to think her head is better, and if the spring comes there is every reason to hope she will recover her wonted gaiety. . . . Grandmamma is suffering from a nervous attack; . . . Papa says that grandmamma is a clever actress who knows the value of a walk, of a glance, and how to fall gracefully into an easy chair."

If Madame Sallambier with her nervous attacks annoyed Balzac in his youth, he spoke beautifully of her after her death, and referred to her as his "grandmother who loved him," or his "most excellent grandmother." In speaking of his grief over the death of Madame de Berny, he said that never, since the death of his grandmother, had he so deeply sounded the gulf of separation. One of his characteristics he inherited from his grandmother, that of keeping trivial things which had belonged to those he loved.

Not a great deal is said of Balzac's younger sister, Laurentia, but he has left this pen picture of her:

"On the whole you know that Laurentia is as beautiful as a picture —that she has the prettiest of arms and hands, that her complexion is pale and lovely. In conversation people give her credit for plenty of sense, and find that it is all a natural sense, which is not yet developed. She has beautiful eyes, and though pale many men admire that. . . . You are not aware that Laurentia has taken a violent fancy to Augustus de L——- . Say nothing that might lead her to suspect I have betrayed the secret, but I have all the trouble in the world to get it into her head that authors are the most villainous of matches (in respect of fortune, be it understood). Really Laurentia is quite romantic. How she would hate me if she knew with what irreverence I allude to her tender attachment."

This attachment was evidently not very serious, for not long afterward Laurentia was married to Monsieur de Montzaigle. His family had a title and stood well in the town, so Laurentia's parents were pleased with the marriage. This was a great event in the family, and Balzac describes to his married sister, Laure, the accompanying excitement in the home:

"Grandmamma is in a great state of delight; papa is quite satisfied,—so am I,—so are you. As to mamma, recall the last days of your own /demoisellerie/, and you will have some idea of what Laurentia and I have to endure. Nature surrounds all roses with thorns: mamma follows nature."[*]

[*] It was from the father of Laurentia's husband that M. and Madame de Berny bought their home in Villeparisis.

The happiness of poor Laurentia was of short duration. She died five years after her marriage, having two children. Her husband did not prove to be what the Balzac family had expected, and her children were left destitute for Madame de Balzac to care for. Balzac always spoke tenderly of her, and once in despair he exclaimed that at times he envied his poor sister Laurentia, who had been lying for many years in her coffin.

After Balzac's return from St. Petersburg, his letters were filled with allusions to Madame de Brugnolle, his housekeeper and financial counselor. He brought presents to various friends, and her he presented with a muff. Besides being very practical, economical and kind, she was a good manager for Balzac financially and strict with him regarding his diet; the /bonne montagnarde/ did almost everything possible, from running his errands to making his home happy. He sent business letters under her name, and her fidelity and devotion are seen in her denying herself clothes in order to buy household necessities for him.

She served the novelist as a spy when he and Gavault disagreed. When Lirette visited Paris, she treated her very kindly and gave up her own room in order to arrange comfortable quarters for her. She had some relatives who had entered a convent, and she talked of ending her days in one, but Balzac begged her to keep house for him. He felt that she was born for that! Madame de Brugnolle was of much help to him in looking after Lirette's financial affairs, visiting her in the convent, and carrying messages to her from him. Many times she comforted him by promising to look out for his family, even consenting to go to Wierzchownia, if necessary, as Lirette's visit had helped her to realize as never before the angelic sweetness of his /Loup/.

In return for this devotion, he took her with him to Frankfort and to Bury to visit Madame de Bocarme. He celebrated the birthday of the /montagnarde/ in 1844, giving her some very attractive presents. Her economy and devotion seemed to increase with time, and enabled him to travel without any worry about his home. What must not have been the trial to him when this happy household came to be broken up later by her marriage!

Madame Delannoy was an old family friend of the Balzacs. She aided Balzac in his financial troubles as early in his career as 1826, and though he remained indebted to her for more than twenty years, he tried to repay her and was ever grateful to her, calling her his second mother. The following, written late in his career, reveals his general attitude towards her:

"I have just written a long letter to Madame Delannoy, with whom I have settled my business; but this still leaves me with obligations of conscientiousness towards her, which my first book will acquit. No one could have behaved more like a mother, or been more adorable than she has been throughout all this business. She has been a mother, I will be a son."

But if she remained one of his principal creditors, she received many literary proofs of his appreciation. As early as 1831 he dedicated to her a volume of his /Romans et Contes philosophiques/, but later changed the title to /Etudes philosophiques/, and dedicated to her /La Recherche de L'Absolu/:

"To Madame Josephine Delannoy, nee Doumerg.

"Madame, may God grant that this book have a longer life than mine! The gratitude which I have vowed to you, and which I hope will equal your almost maternal affection for me, would last beyond the limits prescribed for human feeling. This sublime privilege of prolonging the life in our hearts by the life of our works would be, if there were ever a certainty in this respect, a recompense for all the labor it costs those whose ambition is such. Yet again I say: May God grant it!

"DE BALZAC."

Balzac once thought of buying from Madame Delannoy a house that was left her by her friend, M. Ferraud, but which she could not keep. He felt that this would be advantageous to them both, but the plan was never carried out. Besides their financial and literary relations, their social relations were most cordial. He speaks of accompanying her and her daughter to the Italian opera twice during the absence of Madame Visconti.

In 1842, Balzac dedicated /La Maison-du-Chat-qui-pelote/ to Mademoiselle Marie de Montbeau, the daughter of Camille Delannoy, a friend of his sister, and the granddaughter of Madame Delannoy.

Another friend of Balzac's family was Madame de Pommereul. In the fall of 1828 after his serious financial loss, Balzac went to visit Baron and Madame de Pommereul in Brittany, where he obtained the material for /Les Chouans/, and became familiar with the chateau de Fougere. To please Madame de Pommereul, Balzac changed the name of his book from /Le Gars/ to /Les Chouans/, after temporarily calling it /Le Dernier Chouan/.

She has given a beautiful pen portrait of the youthful Balzac in which she describes minutely his appearance, noting his beautiful hands, his intelligent forehead and his expressive golden brown eyes. There was something in his manner of speaking, in his gestures, in his general appearance, so much goodness, confidence, naivete and frankness that it was impossible to know him without loving him, and his exuberant good nature was infectious. In spite of his misfortunes, he had not been in their company a quarter of an hour, and they had not even shown him to his room, before he had brought the general and herself to tears with laughter.

"On some evenings he remained in the drawing-room in company with his hosts, and entered into controversies with Madame de Pommereul, who, being very pious herself, tried to persuade him to make a practice of religion; while Balzac, in return, when the discussion was exhausted, endeavored to teach her the rules of backgammon. But the one remained unconverted and the other never mastered the course of the noble game. Occasionally he helped to pass the time by inventing stories, which he told with all the vividness of which he was master."

A few months after this prolonged visit, Balzac wrote to General de Pommereul, expressing his deep appreciation of their hospitality, and in speaking of the book which he had just written, hoped that Madame de Pommereul would laugh at some details about the butter, the weddings, the stiles, and the difficulties of going to the ball, etc., which he had inserted in his work,—if she could read it without falling asleep.

Balzac made perhaps his most prolonged visits in the home of another old family friend, M. de Margonne, who was living with his wife at Sache. He describes his life there thus:

"Sache is the remains of a castle on the Indre, in one of the most delicious valleys of Touraine. The proprietor, a man of fifty- five, used to dandle me on his knee. He has a pious and intolerant wife, rather deformed and not clever. I go there for him; and besides, I am free there. They accept me throughout the region as a child; I have no value whatever, and I am happy to be there, like a monk in a monastery. I always go there to meditate serious works. The sky there is so blue, the oaks so beautiful, the calm so vast! . . . Sache is six leagues from Tours. But not a woman, not a conversation possible!"

Not only did Balzac visit them when he wished to compose a serious work, but he often went there to recuperate from overwork. He probably did not enjoy their company, as he spoke of "having" to dine with them and he is perhaps even chargeable with ingratitude when he speaks of their parsimony.

Like his own family, these old people were interested in seeing him married to a rich lady, but to no avail. In spite of his unkind remarks about them, Balzac appreciated their hospitality, and expressed it by dedicating to M. de Margonne /Une Tenebreuse Affaire/.

MADAME CARRAUD—MADAME NIVET

"You are my public, you and a few other chosen souls, whom I wish to please; but yourself especially, whom I am proud to know, you whom I have never seen or listened to without gaining some benefit, you who have the courage to aid me in tearing up the evil weeds from my field, you who encourage me to perfect myself, you who resemble so much that angel to whom I owe everything; in short, you who are so good towards my ill-doings. I alone know how quickly I turn to you. I have recourse to your encouragements, when some arrow has wounded me; it is the wood-pigeon regaining its nest. I bear you an affection which resembles no other, and which can have no rival, because it is alone of its kind. It is so bright and pleasant near you! From afar, I can tell you, without fear of being put to silence, all I think about your mind, about your life. No one can wish more earnestly that the road be smooth for you. I should like to send you all the flowers you love, as I often send above your head the most ardent prayers for your happiness."

Balzac's friendship with Madame Zulma Carraud was not only of the purest and most beautiful nature, but it lasted longer than his friendship with any other woman, terminating only with his death. It was even more constant than that with his sister Laure, which was broken at times. Though Madame Surville states that it began in 1826, the following passage shows an earlier date: "I embrace you, and press you to a heart devoted to you. A friendship as true and tender now in 1838 as in 1819. Nineteen years!" The first letter to her in either edition of his correspondence, however, is dated 1826.

Madame Carraud, as Zulma Tourangin, attended the same convent as Balzac's sister Laure. Her husband was a distinguished officer in the artillery and a man of learning, but absolutely lacking in ambition, preferring to direct the instruction of Saint-Cyr rather than to risk the chances of advancement presented in active service. He became inspector of the gunpowder manufactory at Angouleme, and later retired to his home at Frapesle, near Issoudun. Though an excellent husband, his inactivity was a great annoyance to his wife. According to several Balzacian writers, Madame Carraud became the type of the /femme incomprise/ for Balzac, but the present writer is inclined to agree with M. Serval when he calls this judgment astonishing, since she was a woman who adored her husband and sons, was an author of some moral books for children, and nothing in her suggested either vagueness of soul or melancholy. Madame Carraud herself gives a glimpse of her married life in saying to Balzac that she and her husband are not sympathetic in everything, that being of different temperaments things appear differently to them, but that she knows happiness, and her life is not empty.

Often when sick, discouraged, overworked or pursued by his creditors, Balzac sought refuge in her home, and with a pure and disinterested maternal affection, she calmed him and inspired him with courage to continue the battle of life. It was indeed the maternal element that he needed and longed for, and Madame Carraud seems to have been a rare mother who really understood her child. He confided in her not only his financial worries, but also his love affairs, his aspirations in life, and his ideas of woman:

"I care more for the esteem of a few persons, amongst whom you are one of the first, both in friendship and in high intellect—one of the noblest souls I have ever known,—than I care for the esteem of the masses, for whom I have, in truth, a profound contempt. There are some vocations that must be obeyed, and something drags me irresistibly towards glory and power. It is not a happy life. There is in me a worship of woman, and a need of loving, which has never been completely satisfied. Despairing of ever being loved and understood as I desire, by the woman I have dreamt of (never having met her, except under one form—that of the heart), I have thrown myself into the tempestuous region of political passions and into the stormy and parching atmosphere of literary glory. . . . If ever I should find a wife and a fortune, I could resign myself very easily to domestic happiness; but where are these things to be found? Where is the family which would have faith in a literary fortune? It would drive me mad to owe my fortune to a woman, unless I loved her, or to owe it to flatteries; I am obliged, therefore, to remain isolated. In the midst of this desert, be assured that friendships such as yours, and the assurance of finding a shelter in a loving heart, are the best consolations I can have. . . . To dedicate myself to the happiness of a woman is my constant dream, but I do not believe marriage and love can exist in poverty. . . . I work too hard and I am too much worried with other things to be able to pay attention to those sorrows which sleep and make their nest in the heart. It may be that I shall come to the end of my life, without having realized the hopes I entertained from them. . . . As regards my soul, I am profoundly sad. My work alone keeps me alive. Will there never be a woman for me in this world? My fits of despondency and bodily weariness come upon me more frequently, and weigh upon me more heavily; to sink under this crushing load of fruitless labor, without having near me the gentle caressing presence of woman, for whom I have worked so much!"

Though Balzac and his mother were never congenial, he became very lonely after she left him in 1832. In the autumn of that year he had a break with the Duchesse de Castries, so he began the new year by summing up his trials and pouring forth his longings to Madame Carraud as he could do to no other woman, not even to his /Dilecta/. In response to this despondent epistle, she showed her broad sympathetic friendship by writing him a beautiful and comforting letter, in which she regretted not being able to live in Paris with him, so as to see him daily and give him the desired affection.

Not only through the hospitality of her home, but by sending various gifts, she ministered to Balzac's needs or caprices. To make his study more attractive, she indulged his craving for elegance and grace by surprising him with the present of a carpet and a lovely tea service. In thanking her for her thoughtfulness, he informed her that she had inspired some of the pages in the /Medicin de Campagne/.

Besides being so intimate a friend of Madame Carraud, the novelist was also a friend of M. Carraud, whom he called "Commandant Piston," and discussed his business plans with him before going to Corsica and Sardinia to investigate the silver mines. M. Carraud had a fine scientific mind; he approved of Balzac's scheme, and thought of going with him; his wife was astonished on hearing this, since he never left the house even to look after his own estate. However, his natural habit asserted itself and he gave up the project.

Madame Carraud was much interested in politics, and many of Balzac's political ideas are set forth in his letters to her when he was a candidate for the post of deputy. She reproached him for a mobility of ideas, an inconstancy of resolution, and feared that the influence of the Duchesse de Castries had not been good for him. To this last accusation, he replied that she was unjust, and that he would never be sold to a party for a woman.

Another tie which united Balzac to Madame Carraud was her sympathy for his devotion to Madame de Berny, of whom she was not jealous. Both women were devoted to him, and were friendly towards each other, so much so that in December, 1833, she invited Balzac to bring Madame de Berny with him to spend several days in her home at Frapesle. This he especially appreciated, since neither his mother nor his sister approved of his relations with his /Dilecta/.

Madame Carraud occupied in Balzac's life a position rather between that of Madame de Berny and that of a sister. Indeed, he often referred to her as a sister, and she was generous minded enough to ask him not to write to her when she learned how unpleasant his mother and sister were in regard to his writing to his friends.

Seeing his devotion to her, one can understand why he begged her to spare him neither counsels, scoldings nor reproaches, for all were received kindly from her. One can perceive also the sincerity of the following expressions of friendship:

"You are right, friendship is not found ready made. Thus every day mine for you increases; it has its root both in the past and in the present. . . . Though I do not write often, believe that my friendship does not sleep; the farther we advance in life, precious ties like our friendship only grow the closer. . . . I shall never let a year pass without coming to inhabit my room at Frapesle. I am sorry for all your annoyances; I should like to know you are already at home, and believe me, I am not averse to an agricultural life, and even if you were in any sort of hell, I would go there to join you. . . . Dear friend, let me at least tell you now, in the fulness of my heart, that during this long and painful road four noble beings have faithfully held out their hands to me, encouraged me, loved me, and had compassion on me; and you are one of them, who have in my heart an inalienable privilege and priority over all other affections; every hour of my life upon which I look back is filled with precious memories of you. . . . You will always have the right to command me, and all that is in me is yours. When I have dreams of happiness, you always take part in them; and to be considered worthy of your esteem is to me a far higher prize than all the vanities the world can bestow. No, you can give me no amount of affection which I do not desire to return to you a thousand-fold. . . . There are a few persons whose approval I desire, and yours is one of those I hold most dear."

Among those to whom Balzac could look for criticism, Madame Carraud had the high intelligence necessary for such a role; he felt that never was so wonderful an intellect as hers so entirely stifled, and that she would die in her corner unknown. (Perhaps this estimate of her caused various writers to think that Madame Carraud was Balzac's model for the /femme incomprise/.) Balzac not only had her serve him as a critic, but in 1836 he requested her to send him at once the names of various streets in Angouleme, and wished the "Commandant" to make him a rough plan of the place. This data he wanted for /Les deux Poetes/, the first part of /Les Illusions perdues/.

Like his family and some of his most intimate friends, she too interested herself in his future happiness, but when she wrote to him about marriage, he was furious for a long time. Concerning this question, Balzac informs her that a woman of thirty, possessing three or four hundred thousand francs, who would take a fancy to him, would find him willing to marry her, provided she were gentle, sweet- tempered and good-looking, although enormous sacrifices would be imposed on him by this course. Several months later, he writes her that if she can find a young girl twenty-two years of age, worth two hundred thousand francs or even one hundred thousand, she must think of him, provided the dowry can be applied to his business.

If the Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul is correct in his statement, Balzac showed Madame Carraud the first letter from /l'Etrangere/, in spite of his usual extreme prudence and absolute silence in such matters. She answered it, so another explanation of Balzac's various handwritings might be given. At least, Madame Carraud's seal was used.

In later years, Madame Carraud met with financial reverses. The following letter, which is the last to her on record, shows not only what she had been to Balzac in his life struggle, but his deep appreciation and gratitude:

"We are such old friends, you must not hear from any one else the news of the happy ending of this grand and beautiful soul-drama which has been going on for sixteen years. Three days ago I married the only woman I have ever loved, whom I love more than ever, and whom I shall love to my life's end. I believe this is the reward God has kept in store for me through so many years of neither a happy youth nor a blooming spring; I shall have the most brilliant summer and the sweetest of all autumns. Perhaps, from this point of view, my most happy marriage will seem to you like a personal consolation, showing as it does that Providence keeps treasures in store to bestow on those who endure to the end. . . . Your letter has gained for you the sincerest of friends in the person of my wife, from whom I have had no secrets for a long time past, and she has known you by all the instances of your greatness of soul, which I have told her, also by my gratitude for your treasures of hospitality toward me. I have described you so well, and your letter has so completed your portrait, that now you are felt to be a very old friend. Also, with the same impulse, with one voice, and with one and the same feeling in our hearts, we offer you a pleasant little room in our house in Paris, in order that you may come there absolutely as if it were your own house. And what shall I say to you? You are the only creature to whom we could make this offer, and you must accept it or you would deserve to be unfortunate, for you must remember that I used to go to your house, with the sacred unscrupulousness of friendship, when you were in prosperity, and when I was struggling against all the winds of heaven, and overtaken by the high tides of the equinox, drowned in debts. I have it now in my power to make the sweet and tender reprisals of gratitude . . . You will have some days' happiness every three months: come more frequently if you will; but you are to come, that is settled. I did this in the old times. At St. Cyr, at Angouleme, at Frapesle, I renewed my life for the struggle; there I drew fresh strength, there I learned to see all that was wanting in myself; there I obtained that for which I was thirsty. You will learn for yourself all that you have unconsciously been to me, to me a toiler who was misunderstood, overwhelmed for so long under misery, both physical and moral. Ah! I do not forget your motherly goodness, your divine sympathy for those who suffer. . . . Well, then as soon as you wish to come to Paris, you will come without even letting us know. You will come to the Rue Fortunee exactly as to your own house, absolutely as I used to go to Frapesle. I claim this as my right. I recall to your mind what you said to me at Angouleme, when broken down after writing /Louis Lambert/, ill, and as you know, fearing lest I should go mad. I spoke of the neglect to which these unhappy ones are abandoned. 'If you were to go mad, I would take care of you.' Those words, your look, and your expression have never been forgotten. All this is still living in me now, as in the month of July 1832. It is in virtue of that word that I claim your promise to-day, for I have almost gone mad with happiness. . . . When I have been questioned here about my friendships you have been named the first. I have described that fireside always burning, which is called Zulma, and you have two sincere woman-friends (which is an achievement), the Countess Mniszech and my wife."[*]

[*] Balzac is not exaggerating about the free use he made of her home, for besides going there for rest, he worked there, and two of his works, /La Grenadiere/ and /La Femme abandonnee/, were signed at Angouleme.

His devotion is again seen in the beautiful words with which he dedicates to her in 1838 /La Maison Nucingen/:

"To Madame Zulma Carraud.

"To whom, madame, but to you should I inscribe this work, to you whose lofty and candid intellect is a treasury to your friends, to you who are to me not only an entire public, but the most indulgent of sisters? Will you deign to accept it as a token of a friendship of which I am proud? You, and some few souls as noble as your own, will grasp my thought in reading /la Maison Nucingen/ appended to /Cesar Birotteau/. Is there not a whole social contrast between the two stories?

"DE BALZAC."

While hiding from his creditors, Balzac took refuge with Madame Carraud at Issoudun, where he assumed the name of Madame Dubois to receive his mail. Here he met some people whose names he made immortal by describing them in his /Menage de Garcon/, called later /La Rabouilleuse/. The priest Badinot introduced him to /La Cognette/, the landlady to whom the vineyard peasant sold his wine. La Cognette, some of whose relatives are still living, plays a minor role in the /Comedie humaine/. Her real name was Madame Houssard; her husband, whom Balzac incorrectly called "Pere Cognet," kept a little cabaret in the rue du Bouriau. "Mere Cognette," who lost her husband about 1835, opened a little café at Issoudun during the first years of her widowhood. Balzac was an intermittent and impecunious client of hers; he would enter her shop, quaff a cup of coffee, execrable to the palate of a connoisseur like him, and "chat a bit" with the good old woman who probably unconsciously furnished him with curious material.

The coffee drunk, the chat over, Balzac would strike his pockets, and declaring they were empty, would exclaim: "Upon my word, Mere Cognette, I have forgotten my purse, but the next time I'll pay for this with the rest!" This habit gave "Mere Cognette" an extremely mediocre estimate of the novelist, and she retained a very bad impression of him. Upon learning that he had, as she expressed it, "put me in one of his books," she conceived a violent resentment which ended only with her death (1855). "The brigand," she exclaimed, "he would have done better to pay me what he owes me!"

Another poor old woman, playing a far more important role in Balzac's work, lived at Issoudun and was called "La Rabouilleuse." For a long time, she had been the servant and mistress of a physician in the town. This wretched creature had an end different to the one Balzac gave his Rabouilleuse, but just as miserable, for having grown old, sick, despoiled and without means, she did not have the patience to wait until death sought her, but ended her miserable existence by throwing herself into a well.

The doctor, it seems, at his death had left her a little home and some money, but his heirs had succeeded in robbing her of it entirely.— Perhaps this story is the origin of the contest of Dr. Rouget's heirs with his mistress.

This Rabouilleuse had a daughter who inherited her name, there being nothing else to inherit; she was a dish washer at the Hotel de la Cloche, where Balzac often dined while at Issoudun. Can it be that he saw her there and learned from her the story of her mother?

Balzac was acquainted also with Madame Carraud's sister, Madame Philippe Nivet. M. Nivet was an important merchant of Limoges, living in a pretty, historical home there. It was in this home that Balzac visited early in his literary career, going there partly in order to visit these friends, partly to see Limoges, and partly to examine the scene in which he was going to place one of his most beautiful novels, /Le Cure de Village/. While crossing a square under the conduct of the young M. Nivet, Balzac perceived at the corner of the rue de la Vieille-Poste and the rue de la Cite an old house, on the ground-floor of which was the shop of a dealer in old iron. With the clearness of vision peculiar to him, he decided that this would be a suitable setting for the work of fiction he had already outlined in his mind. It is here that are unfolded the first scenes of /Le Cure de Village/, while on one of the banks of the Vienne is committed the crime which forms the basis of the story.

CHAPTER III

LITERARY FRIENDS

MADAME GAY—MADAME HAMELIN—MADAME DE GIRARDIN—MADAME DESBORDES-VALMORE—MADAME DORVAL

"O matre pulchra filia pulchrior!"

Though Balzac did not go out in "society" a great deal, he was fortunate in associating with the best literary women of his time, and in knowing the charming Madame Sophie Gay, whose salon he frequented, and her three daughters. Elisa, the eldest of these, was married to Count O'Donnel. Delphine was married June 1, 1831, to Emile de Girardin, and Isaure, to Theodore Garre, son of Madame Sophie Gail, an intimate friend of Madame Gay. These two women were known as "Sophie la belle" and "Sophie la laide" or "Sophie de la parole" and "Sophie de la musique." Together they composed an /opera-comique/ which had some success. In 1814, Madame Gay wrote /Anatole/, an interesting novel which Napoleon is said to have read the last night he passed at Fontainebleau before taking pathetic farewell of his guard. A few years before this, she wrote another novel which met with much success, /Leonine de Monbreuse/, a study of the society and customs of the /Directoire/ and of the Empire.

Madame Gay had made a literary center of her drawing-room in the rue Gaillon where she had grouped around her twice a week not only many of the literary and artistic celebrities of the epoch, but also her acquaintances who had occupied political situations under the Empire. Madame Gay, who had made her debut under the /Directoire/, had been rather prominent under the Empire, and under the Restoration took delight in condemning the government of the Bourbons. Introduced into this company, though yet unknown to fame, Balzac forcibly impressed all those who met him, and while his physique was far from charming, the intelligence of his eyes reveled his superiority. Familiar and even hilarious, he enjoyed Madame Gay's salon especially, for here he experienced entire liberty, feeling no restraint whatever. At her receptions as in other salons of Paris, his toilet, neglected at times to the point of slovenliness, yet always displayed some distinguishing peculiarity.

Having acquired some reputation, the young novelist started to carry about with him the enormous and now celebrated cane, the first of a series of magnificent eccentricities. A quaint carriage, a groom whom he called Anchise, marvelous dinners, thirty-one waistcoats bought in one month, with the intention of bringing this number to three hundred and sixty-five, were only a few of the number of bizarre things, which astonished for a moment his feminine friends, and which he laughingly called /reclame/. Like many writers of this epoch, Balzac was not polished in the art of conversing. His conversation was but little more than an amusing monologue, bright and at times noisy, but uniquely filled with himself, and that which concerned him personally. The good, like the evil, was so grossly exaggerated that both lost all appearance of truth. As time went on, his financial embarrassments continually growing and his hopes of relieving them increasing in the same proportion, his future millions and his present debts were the subject of all his discourses.

Madame Gay was by no means universally beloved. In her sharp and disagreeable voice she said much good of herself and much evil of others. She had a mania for titles and was ever ready to mention some count, baron or marquis. In her drawing-room, Balzac found a direct contrast to the Royalist salon of the beautiful Duchesse de Castries which he frequented. In both salons, he met a society entirely unfamiliar to him, and acquainted himself sufficiently with the conventions of these two spheres to make use of them in his novels.

The /Physiologie du Mariage/, published anonymously in December, 1829, gave rise to a great deal of discussion. According to Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, two women well advanced in years, Madame Sophie Gay and Madame Hamelin, are supposed to have inspired the work, and even to have dictated some of its anecdotes least flattering to their sex. This Madame Hamelin, born in Guadeloupe about 1776, was the marvel of the /Directoire/, and several times was sent on secret missions by Napoleon. The role she played under the /Directoire/, the /Consulat/ and the Empire is not clear, but she was a confidential friend of Chateaubriand, lived in the noted house called the /Madeleine/, near the forest of Fontainebleau, and wrote about it as did Madame de Sevigne about /Les Rochers/. While living there, she received her Bonapartist friends as well as her Legitimist friends. Having lived in a society where life means enjoyment, she had many anecdotes to relate. She was a fine equestrienne, a most beautiful dancer, apparently naturally graceful, and bore the sobriquet of /la jolie laide/. Her marriage to the banker, M. Hamelin, together with her accomplishments, secured her a place in the society of the /Directoire/. Balzac, in a letter to Madame Hanska, refers to her as /une vieille celebrite/, and states that she wept over the letter of Madame de Mortsauf to Felix in /Le Lys dans la Vallee/. It is interesting to note that he later built his famous house and breathed his last in the rue Fortunee to which Madame Hamelin gave her Christian name, since it was cut through her husband's property, the former Beaujon Park, and that it became in 1851 the rue Balzac.

Delphine Gay, the beautiful and charming daughter of Madame Sophie Gay, was called "the tenth muse" by her friends, who admired the sonorous original verses which she recited as a young girl in her mother's salon. She became, in June, 1831, the wife of Emile de Girardin, the founder of the /Presse/. Possessing in her youth, a /bellezza folgorante/, Madame de Girardin was then in all the splendor of her beauty; her magnificent features, which might have been too pronounced for a young girl, were admirably suited to the woman and harmonized beautifully with her tall and statuesque figure. Sometimes, in the poems of her youth, she spoke as an authority on the subject of "the happiness of being beautiful." It was not coquetry with her, it was the sentiment of harmony; her beautiful soul was happy in dwelling in a beautiful body.

She held receptions for her friends after the opera, and Balzac was one of the frequenters of her attractive salon. Of her literary friends she was especially proud. According to Theophile Gautier, this was her coquetry, her luxury. If in some salon, some one—as was not unusual at that time—attacked one of her friends, with what eloquent anger did she defend them! What keen repartees, what incisive sarcasm! On these occasions, her beauty glowed and became illuminated with a divine radiance; she was magnificent; one might have thought Apollo was preparing to flay Marsyas!

"Madame de Girardin professed for Balzac a lively admiration to which he was sensible, and for which he showed his gratitude by frequent visits; a costly return for him who was, with good right, so avaricious of his time and of his working hours. Never did woman possess to so high a degree as Delphine,—we were allowed to call her by this familiar name among ourselves—the gift of drawing out the wit of her guests. With her, we always found ourselves in poetical raptures, and each left her salon amazed at himself. There was no flint so rough that she could not cause it to emit one spark; and with Balzac, as you may well believe, there was no need of trying to strike fire; he flashed and kindled at once." (Theophile Gautier, /Life Portraits, Balzac/.)

Balzac was interested in the occult sciences—in chiromancy and cartomancy. He had been told of a sibyl even more astonishing than Mademoiselle Lenormand, and he resolved that Madame de Girardin, Mery and Theophile Gautier should drive with him to the abode of the pythoness at Auteuil. The address given them was incorrect, only a family of honest citizens living there, and the old mother became angry at being taken for a sorceress. They had to make an ignominious retreat, but Balzac insisted that this really was the place and muttered maledictions on the old woman. Madame de Girardin pretended that Balzac had invented all this for the sake of a carriage drive to Auteuil, and to procure agreeable traveling companions. But if disappointed on this occasion, Balzac was more successful at another time, when with Madame de Girardin he visited the "magnetizer," M. Dupotet, rue du Bac.

Besides enjoying for a long time the "happiness of being beautiful," Delphine also enjoyed almost exclusively, in her set, that of being good. In this respect, she was superior to her mother who for the sake of a witticism, never hesitated to offend another. She had but few enemies, and, wishing to have none, tried to win over those who were inimical towards her. For twenty-five years she played the diplomat among all the rivals in talent and in glory who frequented her salon in the rue Laffitte or in the Champs-Elysees. She prevented Victor Hugo from breaking with Lamartine; she remained the friend of Balzac when he quarreled with her autocratic husband. She encouraged Gautier, she consoled George Sand; she had a charming word for every one; and always and everywhere prevailed her merry laughter—even when she longed to weep. But her cheery laugh was not her highest endowment; her greatest gift was in making others laugh.

Balzac had a sincere affection for Delphine Gay and enjoyed her salon. In his letters to her he often addressed her as /Cara/ and /Ma chere ecoliere/. Her poetry having been converted into prose by her prosaic husband, she submitted her writings to Balzac as to an enlightened master. He asked /Delphine Divine/ to write a preface for his /Etudes de Femmes/, but she declined, saying that an habitue of the opera who could so transform himself so as to paint the admirable Abbe Birotteau, could certainly surpass her in writing /une preface de femme/. She did, however, write the sonnet on the /Marguerite/ which Lucien de Rubempre displayed as one of the samples of his volume of verses to the publisher Dauriat; also /Le Chardon/. Balzac made use of this poem, however, only in the original edition of his work; it was replaced in the /Comedie humaine/ by another sonnet, written probably by Lassailly. Madame de Girardin brings her master before the public by mentioning his name in her /Marguerite, ou deux Amours/, where a personage in the book tells about Balzac's return from Austria and his inability to speak German when paying the coachman.

It was at the home of Madame de Girardin that Lamartine met Balzac for the first time, June, 1839. He asked her to invite Balzac to dinner with him that he might thank him, as he was just recovering from an illness during which he had "simply lived" on the novels of the /Comedie humaine/. The invitation she wrote Balzac runs as follows: "M. de Lamartine is to dine with me Sunday, and wishes absolutely to dine with you. Nothing would give him greater pleasure. Come then and be obliging. He has a sore leg, you have a sore foot, we will take care of both of you, we will give you some cushions and footstools. Come, come! A thousand affectionate greetings." And Lamartine has left this appreciation of her and her friendship for Balzac:

"Madame Emile de Girardin, daughter of Madame Gay who had reared her to succeed on her two thrones, the one of beauty, the other of wit, had inherited, moreover, that kindness which inspires love with admiration. These three gifts, beauty, wit, kindness, had made her the queen of the century. One could admire her more or less as a poetess, but, if one knew her thoroughly, it was impossible not to love her as a woman. She had some passion, but no hatred. Her thunderbolts were only electricity; her imprecations against the enemies of her husband were only anger; that passed with the storm. It was always beautiful in her soul, her days of hatred had no morrow. . . . She knew my desire to know Balzac. She loved him, as I was disposed to love him myself. . . . She felt herself in unison with him, whether through gaiety with his joviality, through seriousness with his sadness, or through imagination with his talent. He regarded her also as a rare creature, near whom he could forget all the discomforts of his miserable existence."

A few years after their meeting, Lamartine inquired Balzac's address of Madame de Girardin, as she was one of the few people who knew where he was hiding on account of his debts. Balzac was appreciative of the many courtesies extended to him by Madame de Girardin and was delighted to have her received by his friends, among whom was the Duchesse de Castries.

Madame de Girardin made constant effort to keep the peace between Balzac and her husband, the potentate of the /Presse/. Balzac had known Emile de Girardin since 1829, having been introduced to him by Levavasseur, who had just published his /Physiologie du Mariage/. Later Balzac took his Verdugo to M. de Girardin which appeared in /La Mode/ in which Madame de Girardin and her mother were collaborating; but these two men were too domineering and too violent to have amicable business dealings with each other for any length of time. Balzac, while being /un bourreau d'argent/, would have thought himself dishonored in subordinating his art to questions of commercialism; M. de Girardin only esteemed literature in so far as it was a profitable business. They quarreled often, and each time Madame de Girardin defended Balzac.

Their first serious controversy was in 1834. Balzac was no longer writing for /La Mode/; he took the liberty of reproducing elsewhere some of his articles which he had given to this paper; M. de Girardin insisted that they were his property and that his consent should have been asked. Madame de Girardin naturally knew of the quarrel and had a difficult role to play. If she condemned Balzac, she would be lacking in friendship; if she agreed with him, she would be both disrespectful to her husband and unjust. Like the clever woman that she was, she said both were wrong, and when she thought their anger had passed, she wrote a charming letter to Balzac urging him to come dine with her, since he owed her this much because he had refused her a short time before. She begged that they might become good friends again and enjoy the beautiful days laughing together. He must come to dinner the next Sunday, Easter Sunday, for she was expecting two guests from Normandy who had most thrilling adventures to relate, and they would be delighted to meet him. Again, her sister, Madame O'Donnel, was ill, but would get up to see him, for she felt that the mere sight of him would cure her.

Anybody but Balzac would have accepted this invitation of Madame de Girardin's, were it only to show his gratitude for what she had done for him; but Balzac was so fiery and so mortified by the letter of M. de Girardin that, without taking time to reflect, he wrote to Madame Hanska:

"I have said adieu to that mole-hill of Gay, Emile de Girardin and Company. I seized the first opportunity, and it was so favorable that I broke off, point-blank. A disagreeable affair came near following; but my susceptibility as man of the pen was calmed by one of my college friends, ex-captain in the ex-Royal Guard, who advised me. It all ended with a piquant speech replying to a jest."

However, in answering the invitation of Madame de Girardin, Balzac wrote most courteously expressing his regrets at Madame O'Donnel's illness and pleading work as his excuse for not accepting. This did not prevent the ardent peacemaker from making another attempt. Taking advantage of her husband's absence a few weeks later, she invited Balzac to lunch with Madame O'Donnel and herself. But time had not yet done its work, so Balzac declined, saying it would be illogical for him to accept when M. de Girardin was not at home, since he did not go there when he was present. The following excerpts from his letters, declining her various invitations, show that Balzac regarded her as his friend:

"The regret I experience is caused quite as much by the blue eyes and blond hair of a lady who I believe to be my friend—and whom I would gladly have for mine—as by those black eyes which you recall to my remembrance, and which had made an impression on me. But indeed I can not come. . . . Your /salon/ was almost the only one where I found myself on a footing of friendship. You will hardly perceive my absence; and I remain alone. I thank you with sincere and affectionate feeling, for your kind persistence. I believe you to be actuated by a good motive; and you will always find in me something of devotion towards you in all that personally concerns yourself."

Her attempts to restore the friendship were futile, owing to the obstinacy of the quarrel, but she eventually succeeded by means of her novel, /La Canne de Monsieur de Balzac/. In describing this cane as a sort of club made of turquoises, gold and marvelous chasings, Madame de Girardin incidentally compliments Balzac by making Tancrede observe that Balzac's large, black eyes are more brilliatn than these gems, and wonder how so intellectual a man can carry so ugly a cane.

This famous cane belongs to-day to Madame la Baronne de Fontenay, daughter of Doctor Nacquart. In October, 1850, Madame Honore de Balzac wrote a letter to Doctor Nacquart, Balzac's much loved physician, asking him to accept, as a souvenir of his illustrious friend, this cane which had created such a sensation,—the entire mystery of which consisted in a small chain which she had worn as a young girl, and which had been used in making the knob. There has been much discussion as to its actual appearance. He describes it to Madame Hanska (March 30, 1835), as bubbling with turquoise on a chased gold knob. The description of M. Werdet can not be relied on, for he states that Gosselin brought him the cane in October, 1836, and that Balzac conceived the idea of it while at a banquet in prison, but, as has been shown, the cane was in existence as early as March, 1835, and Madame de Girardin's book appeared in May, 1836. As to the description of the cane given by Paul Lacroix, the Princess Radziwill states that the cane owned by him is the one that Madame Hanska gave Balzac, and which he afterwards discarded for the gaudier one he had ordered for himself. This first cane was left by him to his nephew, Edouard Lacroix. Several years later (1845), Balzac had Froment Meurice make a cane /aux singes/ for the Count George de Mniszech, future son-in-law of Madame Hanska, so the various canes existing in connection with Balzac may help to explain the varying descriptions.

Balzac could not remain indifferent after Madame de Girardin had thus brought his celebrated cane into prominence. He was absent from Paris when the novel appeared, and scarcely had he returned when he wrote her (May 27, 1836), cordially thanking her as an old friend. He also after this made peace with M. de Girardin. But one difficulty was scarcely settled before another began, and the ever faithful Delphine was continually occupied in trying to establish peace. Her numerous letters to Balzac are filled with such expressions as: "Come to-morrow, come to dinner. Come, we can not get along without you! Come, Paris is an awful bore. We need you to laugh. Come dine with us, come! Come!!! Now come have dinner with us to-morrow or day after to-morrow, to-day, or even yesterday, every day!! A thousand greetings from Emile." Thus with her hospitality and merry disposition, she bridged many a break between her husband and Balzac.

Finally, not knowing what to do, she decided not to let Balzac mention the latest quarrel. When he referred to it, she replied: "Oh, no, I beg you, speak to Theophile Gautier. If is not for nothing that I have given him charge of the /feuilleton/ of the /Presse/. That no longer concerns me, make arrangements with him." Then she counseled her husband to have Theophile Gautier direct this part of the /Presse/ in order not to contend with Balzac, but the novelist was so unreasonable that M. de Girardin had to intervene. "My beautiful Queen," once wrote Theophile to Delphine, "if this continues, rather than be caught between the anvil Emile and the hammer Balzac, I shall return my apron to you. I prefer planting cabbage or raking the walls of your garden." To this, Madame de Girardin replied: "I have a gardener with whom I am very well satisfied, thank you; continue to maintain order /du palais/."

The relations between M. de Girardin and the novelist became so strained that Balzac visited Madame de Girardin only when he knew he would not encounter her husband. M. de Girardin retired early in the evening; his wife received her literary friends after the theater or opera. At this hour, Balzac was sure not to meet her husband, whose non-appearance permitted the intimate friends to discuss literature at their ease.

Although Madame de Girardin was married to a publicist, she did not like journalists, so she conceived the fancy of writing a satirical comedy, /L'Ecole des Journalistes/, in which she painted the journalists in rather unflattering colors. The work was received by the committee of the Theatre-Francais, but the censors stopped the performance. Balzac was angry at this interdiction, for he too disliked journalists, but Madame de Girardin took the censorship philosophically. In her salon she read /L'Ecole des Journalistes/ to her literary friends; there Balzac figured prominently, dressed for this occasion in his blue suit with engraved gold buttons, making his coarse Rabelaisian laughter heard throughout the evening.

Balzac's fame increased with the years, but he still regarded the friendship of Madame de Girardin among those he most prized, and in 1842 he dedicated to her /Albert Savarus/. When she moved into the little Greek temple in the Champs-Elysees, she was nearer Balzac, who was living at that time in the rue Basse at Passy, so their relations became more intimate. Yet when, after his return from St. Petersburg where he had visited Madame Hanska in 1843, the /Presse/ published the scandalous story about his connection with the Italian forger, he vowed he would never see again the scorpions Gay and Girardin.

Madame de Girardin regretted Balzac's not being a member of the Academy. In 1845, a chair being vacant, she tried to secure it for him. Although her salon was not an "academic" one, she had several friends who were members of the Academy and she exerted her influence with them in his behalf; when, after all her solicitude, he failed to gain a place among the "forty immortals," she had bitter words for their poor judgment, Balzac at that time being at the zenith of his reputation. Some time before this, too, she promised to write a /feuilleton/ on the great conversationalists of the day, maintaining that Balzac was one of the most brilliant; and she was thoughtful in inserting in her /feuilleton/ a few gracious words about his recent illness and recovery.

Balzac confided to Madame de Girardin his all absorbing passion for Madame Hanska. She knew of the secret visit of the "Countess" to Paris and of his four days' visit with her in Wiesbaden. She knew all the noble qualities and countless charms of the adored "Countess," but never having seen her, she felt that Madame Hanska did not fully reciprocate the passionate love of her /moujik/. Becoming ironical, she called Balzac a /Vetturino per amore/, and told him she had heard that Madame Hanska was, to be sure, exceedingly flattered by his homage and made him follow wherever she went—but only through vanity and pride,—that she was indeed very happy in having for /patito/ a man of genius, but that her social position was too high to permit his aspiring to any other title.

When the /Avant-Propos/ of the /Comedie humaine/ was reprinted in the /Presse/, October 25, 1846, it was preceded by a very flattering introduction written by Madame de Girardin. She continued to entertain the novelist, sending him many amusing invitations. In spite of the "Potentate of the /Presse/," her friendship with Balzac lasted until 1847, when she had to give him up.

The ever faithful Delphine knew of Balzac's financial embarrassment and persuaded her husband to postpone pressing him for the debts which he had partially paid before setting out for the Ukraine. The Revolution of February seriously affected Balzac's financial matters. After the death of Madame O'Donnel, in 1841, Madame de Girardin's friendship lost a part of its charm for Balzac and the rest of it vanished in these troubles. Since the greater part of the last few years of Balzac's life was spent in the Ukraine, she saw but little of him, but she hoped for his return with his long sought bride to the home he had so lovingly prepared for her in the rue Fortunee.

Whether Balzac was fickle in his nature, or whether he was trying to convince Madame Hanska that she was the only woman for whom he cared, one finds, throughout his letters to her, various comments on Madame de Girardin, some favorable, some otherwise. He admired her beauty very much, and was saddened when, at the height of her splendor, she was stricken with smallpox. He was grateful to her for the service she rendered him in arranging for the first presentation of his play /Vautrin/, throughout the misfortune attending this production she proved to be a true friend. Although he accepted her hospitality frequently, at times being invited to meet foreigners, among them the German Mlle. De Hahn, enjoying himself immensely, he regretted the time he sacrificed in this manner, and when he quarreled with her husband, he expressed his happiness in severing his relations with them. While a charming hostess at a small dinner party, she became, Balzac felt, a less agreeable one at a large reception, her talents not being sufficient to conceal her /bourgeois/ origin.

Madame de Girardin was in the country near Paris when she heard the sad news of the death of the author of the /Comedie humaine/. The shock was so great that she fainted, and, on regaining consciousness, wept bitterly over the premature death of her fried. A few years before her own death, in 1855, Madame de Girardin was greatly depressed by painful disappointments. The death of Balzac may be numbered as one of the sad events which discouraged, in the decline of life, the heart and the hope of this noble woman.

Madame Desbordes-Valmore was another literary woman whom Balzac met in the salon of Madame Sophie Gay, where she and Delphine recited poetry. Losing her mother at an early age under especially sad circumstances and finding her family destitute, after long hesitation, she resigned herself to the stage. Though very delicate, by dint of studious nights, close economy and many privations, she prepared herself for this work. At this time she contracted a /habit/ of suffering which passed into her life. She played at the /Opera Comique/ and recited well, but did not sing. At the age of twenty her private griefs compelled her to give up singing, for the sound of her own voice made her weep. So from music she turned to poetry, and her first volume of poems appeared in 1818. She began her theatrical career in Lille, played at the Odeon, Paris, and in Brussels, where she was married in 1817 to M. Valmore, who was playing in the same theater. Though she went to Lyons, to Italy, and to the Antilles, she made her home in Paris, wandering from quarter to quarter.

Of her three children, Hippolyte, Undine (whose real name was Hyacinthe) and Ines, the two daughters passed away before her. Her husband was honor and probity itself, and suffered only as a man can, from compulsory inaction. He asked but for honest employment and the privilege to work. She was so sensitive and felt so unworthy that she did not call for her pension after it was secured for her by her friends, Madame Recamier and M. de Latouche. A letter written by her to Antoine de Latour (October 15, 1836) gives a general idea of her life: "I do not know how I have slipped through so many shocks,—and yet I live. My fragile existence slipped sorrowfully into this world amid the pealing bells of a revolution, into whose whirlpool I was soon to be involved. I was born at the churchyard gate, in the shadow of a church whose saints were soon to be desecrated."

She was indeed a "tender and impassioned poetess, . . . one who united an exquisite moral sensibility to a thrilling gift of song. . . . Her verses were doubtless the expression of her life; in them she is reflected in hues both warm and bright; they ring with her cries of love and grief. . . . Hers was the most courageous, tender and compassionate of souls."

A letter written to Madame Duchambye (December 7, 1841), shows what part she played in Balzac's literary career:

"You know, my other self, that even ants are of some use. And so it was I who suggested, not M. de Balzac's piece, but the notion of writing it and the distribution of the parts, and then the idea of Mme. Dorval, whom I love for her talent, but especially for her misfortunes, and because she is dear to me. I have made such a moan, that I have obtained the sympathy and assistance of—whom do you guess?—poor Thisbe, who spends her life in the service of the /litterrateur/. She talked and insinuated and insisted, until at last he came up to me and said, 'So it shall be! My mind is made up! Mme. Dorval shall have a superb part!' And how he laughed! . . . Keep this a profound secret. Never betray either me or poor Thisbe, particularly our influence on behalf of Mme. Dorval."

His friendship for her is seen in a letter written to her in 1840:

"Dear Nightingale,—Two letters have arrived, too brief by two whole pages, but perfumed with poetry, breathing the heaven whence they come, so that (a thing which rarely happens with me) I remained in a reverie with the letters in my hand, making a poem all alone to myself, saying, 'She has then retained a recollection of the heart in which she awoke an echo, she and all her poetry of every kind.' We are natives of the same country, madame, the country of tears and poverty. We are as much neighbors and fellow- citizens as prose and poetry can be in France; but I draw near to you by the feeling with which I admire you, and which made me stand for an hour and ten minutes before your picture in the Salon. Adieu! My letter will not tell you all my thoughts; but find by intuition all the friendship which I have entrusted to it, and all the treasures which I would send you if I had them at my disposal."

Soon after Balzac met Madame Hanska, he reserved for her the original of an epistle from Madame Desbordes-Valmore which he regarded as a masterpiece. Balzac's friendship for the poetess, which began so early in his literary life, was a permanent one. Just before leaving for his prolonged visit in Russia, he wrote her a most complimentary letter in which he expressed his hopes of being of service to M. Valmore at the Comedie Francaise, and bade her good-bye, wishing her and her family much happiness.

Madame Desbordes-Valmore was one of the three women whom Balzac used as a model in portraying some of the traits of his noted character, Cousin Bette. He made Douai, her native place, the setting of /La Recherche de l'Absolu/, and dedicated to her in 1845 one of his early stories, /Jesus-Christ en Flandres/:

"To Marceline Desbordes-Valmore,

"To you, daughter of Flanders, who are one of its modern glories, I dedicate this naïve tradition of old Flanders.

"DE BALZAC."

Though Balzac's first play, and first attempt in literature, /Cromwell/, was a complete failure, this did not deter him from longing to become a successful playwright. After having established himself as a novelist, he turned again to this field of literature. Having written several plays, he was acquainted, naturally, with the leading actresses of his day; among these was Madame Dorval, whom he liked. He purposed giving her the main role in /Les Ressources de Quinola/, but when he assembled the artists to hear his play, he had not finished it, and improvised the fifth act so badly that Madame Dorval left the room, refusing to accept her part.

Again, he wished her to take the leading role in /La Maratre/ (as the play was called after she had objected to the name, /Gertrude, Tragedie bourgeoise/). To their disappointment, however, the theater director, Hostein, gave the heroine's part to Madame Lacressoniere; the tragedy was produced in 1848. The following year, while in Russia, Balzac sketched another play in which Madame Dorval was to have the leading role, but she died a few weeks later.

Mademoiselle Georges was asked to take the role of Brancadori in /Les Ressources de Quinola/, presented for the first time on March 19, 1842, at the Odeon.

Balzac was acquainted with Mademoiselle Mars also, and was careful to preserve her autograph in order to send it to his "Polar Star," when the actress wrote to him about her role in /La grande Mademoiselle/.

LA DUCHESSE D'ABRANTES

"She has ended like the Empire."

Another of Balzac's literary friends was Madame Laure Junot, the Duchesse d'Abrantes. She was an intimate friend of Madame de Girardin and it was in the salon of the latter's mother, Madame Sophie Gay, that Balzac met her.

The Duchesse d'Abrantes, widow of Marechal Junot, had enjoyed under the Empire all the splendors of official life. Her salon had been one of the most attractive of her epoch. Being in reduced circumstances after the downfall of the Empire and having four children (Josephine, Constance, Napoleon and Alfred) to support, her life was a constant struggle to obtain a fortune and a position for her children. But as she had no financial ability, and had acquired very extravagant habits, the money she was constantly seeking no sooner entered her hands than it vanished. Wishing to renounce none of her former luxuries, she insisted upon keeping her salon as in former days, trying to conceal her poverty by her gaiety; but it was a sorrowful case of /la misere doree/.

Feeling that luxury was as indispensable to her as bread, and finding her financial embarrassment on the increase, she decided to support herself by means of her pen. She might well have recalled the wise words of Madame de Tencin when she warned Marmontel to beware of depending on the pen, since nothing is more casual. The man who makes shoes is sure of his pay; the man who writes a book or a play is never sure of anything.

Though the Generale Junot belonged to a society far different from Balzac's they had many things in common which brought him frequently to her salon. Balzac realized the necessity of frequenting the salon, saying that the first requisite of a novelist is to be well-bred; he must move in society as much as possible and converse with the aristocratic /monde/. The kitchen, the green-room, can be imagined, but not the salon; it is necessary to go there in order to know how to speak and act there.

Though Balzac visited various salons, he presented a different appearance in the drawing-room of Madame d'Abrantes. The glories of the Empire overexcited him to the point of giving to his relations with the Duchesse a vivacity akin to passion. The first evening, he exclaimed: "This woman has seen Napoleon as a child, she has seen him occupied with the ordinary things of life, then she has seen him develop, rise and cover the world with his name! She is for me a saint come to sit beside me, after having lived in heaven with God!: This love of Balzac for Napoleon underwent more than one variation, but at this time he had erected in his home in the rue de Cassini a little altar surmounted by a statue of Napoleon, with this inscription: "What he began with the sword, I shall achieve with the pen."

When Balzac first met the Duchesse d'Abrantes, she was about forty years of age. It is probably she whom he describes thus, under the name of Madame d'Aiglemont, in /La Femme de trente Ans/:

"Madame d'Aiglemont's dress harmonized with the thought that dominated her person. Her hair was gathered up into a tall coronet of broad plaits, without ornament of any kind, for she seemed to have bidden farewell forever to elaborate toilets. Nor were any of the small arts of coquetry which spoil so many women to be detected in her. Only her bodice, modest though it was, did not altogether conceal the dainty grace of her figure. Then, too, the luxury of her long gown consisted in an extremely distinguished cut; and if it is permissible to look for expression in the arrangement of materials, surely the numerous straight folds of her dress invested her with a great dignity. Moreover, there may have been some lingering trace of the indelible feminine foible in the minute care bestowed upon her hand and foot; yet, if she allowed them to be seen with some pleasure, it would have tasked the utmost malice of a rival to discover any affectation in her gestures, so natural did they seem, so much a part of old childish habit, that her careless grace absolves this vestige of vanity. All these little characteristics, the nameless trifles which combine to make up the sum of a woman's beauty or ugliness, her charm or lack of charm, can not be indicated, especially when the soul is the bond of all the details and imprints on them a delightful unity. Her manner was in perfect accord with her figure and her dress. Only in certain women at a certain age is it given to put language into their attitude. Is it sorrow, is it happiness that gives to the woman of thirty, to the happy or unhappy woman, the secret of this eloquence of carriage? This will always be an enigma which each interprets by the aid of his hopes, desires, or theories. The way in which she leaned both elbows on the arm of her chair, the toying of her inter-clasped fingers, the curve of her throat, the freedom of her languid but lithesome body which reclined in graceful exhaustion, the unconstraint of her limbs, the carelessness of her pose, the utter lassitude of her movements, all revealed a woman without interest in life. . . ."

Balzac's parents having moved from Villeparisis to Versailles, he had an excellent opportunity of seeing the Duchess while visiting them, as she was living at that time in the Grand-Rue de Montreuil No. 65, in a pavilion which she called her /ermitage/. In /La Femme de trente Ans/, Balzac has described her retreat as a country house between the church and the barrier of Montreuil, on the road which leads to the Avenue de Saint-Cloud. This house, built originally for the short-lived loves of some great lord, was situated so that the owner could enjoy all the pleasures of solitude with the city almost at his gates.

Soon after their meeting, a sympathetic friendship was formed between the two writers; they had the same literary aspirations, the same love for work, the same love of luxury and extravagant tastes, the same struggles with poverty and the same trials and disappointments.

Since Balzac was attracted to beautiful names as well as to beautiful women, that of the Duchesse d'Abrantes appealed to him, independently of the wealth of history it recalled. He was happy to make the acquaintance of one who could give him precise information of the details of the /Directoire/ and of the Empire, an instruction begun by the /commere Gay/. Thus the Duchesse d'Abrantes was to exercise over him, though in a less degree, the same influence for the comprehension of the Imperial world that Madame de Berry did for the Royalist world, just as the Duchesse de Castries later was to initiate him into the society of the Faubourg Saint-Germain.

Madame d'Abrantes, pleased as she was to meet literary people, welcomed most cordially the young author who came to her seeking stories of the Corsican. Owing to financial difficulties she was leading a rather retired and melancholy life, and the brilliant and colorful language of Balzac, fifteen years her junior, aroused her heart from its torpor, and her friendship for him took a peculiar tinge of sentiment which she allowed to increase. It had been many years since she had been thus moved, and this new feeling, which came to her as she saw the twilight of her days approaching, was for her a love that meant youth and life itself.

Hence her words pierced the very soul of Balzac and kindled an enthusiasm which made her appear to him greater than she really was; she literally dazzled and subjugated him. Her gaiety and animation in relating incidents of the Imperial court, and her autumnal sunshine, its rays still glowing with warmth as well as brightness, compelled Balzac to perceive for the second time in his life the insatiability of the woman who has passed her first youth—the woman of thirty, or the tender woman of forty. The fact is, however, not that Balzac created /la femme sensible de guarante ans/, as is stated by Philarete Chasles, so much as that two women of forty, Madame de Berny and Madame d'Abrantes, created him.

This affection savored of vanity in both; she was proud that at her years she could inspire love in a man so much younger than herself, while Balzac, whose affection was more of the head than of the heart, was flattered—it must be confessed—in having made the conquest of a duchess. Concealing her wrinkles and troubles under an adorable smile, no woman was better adapted than she to understand "the man who bathed in a marble tub, had no chairs on which to sit or to seat his friends, and who built at Meudon a very beautiful house without a flight of stairs."[*]

[*] This house, /Les Jardies/, was at Ville-d'Avray and not at Meudon.

But the love on Balzac's side must have been rather fleeting, for many years later, on March 17, 1850, he wrote to his old friend, Madame Carraud, announcing his marriage with Madame Hanska: "Three days ago I married the only woman I have ever loved." Evidently he had forgotten, among others, the poor Duchess, who had passed away twelve years before.

But how could Balzac remain long her ardent lover, when Madame de Berny, of whom Madame d'Abrantes was jealous, felt that he was leaving her for a duchess? And how could he remain more than a friend to Madame Junot, when the beautiful Duchesse de Castries was for a short time complete mistress of his heart,[*] and was in her turn to be replaced by Madame Hanska? The Duchess could probably understand his inconstancy, for she not only knew of his attachment to Madame de Castries but he wrote her on his return from his first visit to Madame Hanska at Neufchatel, describing the journey and saying that the Val de Travers seemed made for two lovers.

[*] It is an interesting coincidence that the Duchess whose star was waning had been in love with the fascinating Austrian ambassador, Comte de Metternich, and the Duchess who was to take her place, was just recovering from an amorous disappointment in connection with his son when she met Balzac.

Knowing Balzac's complicated life, one can understand how, having gone to Corsica in quest of his Eldorado just before the poor Duchess breathed her last, he could write to Madame Hanska on his return to Paris: "The newspapers have told you of the deplorable end of the poor Duchesse d'Abrantes. She has ended like the Empire. Some day I will explain her to you,—some good evening at Wierzschownia."