Women in the Life of Balzac/Chapter V/Part I

"I have to stand alone now amidst my troubles; formerly I had beside me in my struggles the most courageous and the sweetest  person in the world, a woman whose memory is each day renewed in  my heart, and whose divine qualities make all other friendships  when compared with hers seem pale. I no longer have help in the  difficulties of life; when I am in doubt about any matter, I have  now no other guide than this final thought, 'If she were alive,  what would she say?' Intellects of this order are rare." Balzac loved to seek the sympathy and confidence of people whose minds were at leisure, and who could interest themselves in his affairs. With his artistic temperament, he longed for the refinement, society and delicate attentions which he found in the friendships of various women. "The feeling of abandonment and of solitude in which I am stings me. There is nothing selfish in me; but I need to tell my thoughts, my efforts, my feelings to a being who is not myself; otherwise I have no strength. I should wish for no crown if there were no feet at which to lay that which men may put upon my head."

One of the first of these friendships was that formed with Madame de Berny, nee (Laure-Louise-Antoinette) Hinner. She was the daughter of a German musician, a harpist at the court of Louis XVI, and of Louise-Marguerite-Emelie Quelpec de Laborde, a lady in waiting at the court of Marie Antoinette. M. Hinner died in 1784, after which Madame Hinner was married to Francois-Augustin Reinier de Jarjayes, adjutant-general of the army. M. Jarjayes was one of the best known persons belonging to the Royalist party during the Revolution, a champion of the Queen, whom he made many attempts to save. He was one of her most faithful friends, was intrusted with family keepsakes, and was made lieutenant-general under Louis XVIII. Madame Jarjayes was much loved by the Queen; she was also implicated in the plots. Before dying, Marie Antoinette sent her a lock of her hair and a pair of earrings. Laure Hinner was married April 8, 1793, to M. Gabriel de Berny, almost nine years her senior, who was of the oldest nobility. Madame de Berny, her husband, her mother and her stepfather were imprisoned for nine months, and were not released until after the fall of Robespierre.

The married life of Madame de Berny was unhappy; she was intelligent and sentimental; he, capricious and morose. She seems to have realized the type of the femme incomprise; she too was an etrangere, and bore some traits of her German origin. Coming into Balzac's life at about the age of forty, this femme de quarante ans became for him the amie and the companion who was to teach him life. Still beautiful, having been reared in intimate court circles, having been the confidante of plotters and the guardian of secrets, possessed of rare trinkets and souvenirs&mdash;what an open book was this memoire vivante, and with what passion did the young interrogator absorb the pages! Here he found unknown anecdotes, ignored designs, and here the sources of his great plots, Les Chouans, Madame de la Chanterie, and Un Episode sous la Terreur.

All this is what she could teach him, aided perhaps by his mother, who lived until 1837. Here is the secret of Balzac's royalism; here is where he first learned of the great ladies that appear in his work, largely portrayed to him by the amie who watched over his youth and guided his maturity.

Having consulted the Almanach des 25,000 adresses, Madame Ruxton thinks that Balzac met Madame de Berny when the two families lived near each other in Paris; M. de Berny and family spent the summers in Villeparisis, and resided during the winters at 3, rue Portefoin, Paris. It is possible that he met her at the soirees, which he frequented with his sisters, and where his awkwardness provoked smiles from the ladies. While it is generally supposed that they met at Villeparisis, MM. Hanotaux et Vicaire also believed that they must have known each other before this, if Balzac is referring to his own life in Oeuvres diverses: Une Passion au College.

Madame de Berny is first mentioned in Balzac's correspondence in 1822 when, in writing his sister Laure the general news, he informs her that Madame de Berny has become a grandmother, and that after forty years of reflection, realizing that money is everything, she had invested in grain. But he must have met her some time before this, for his family was living in Villeparisis as early as 1819.

M. de Berny bought in 1815 the home of M. Michaud de Montzaigle in Villeparisis, and remained possessor of it until 1825. M. Parquin, the present owner of this home, is a Balzacien who has collected all the traditions remaining in Villeparisis concerning the two families. According to Villeparisis tradition, Madame de Berny was a woman of great intelligence who wrote much, and her notes and stories were not only utilized by Balzac, but she was his collaborator, especially in writing the Physiologie du Mariage and the first part of the Femme de trente Ans.

When Balzac went to Villeparisis to reside, he became tutor to his brother Henri, and it was arranged that he should also give lessons to one of the sons of M. and Madame de Berny. Thus Balzac probably saw her daily and was struck by her patience and kindness toward her husband. She was apparently a gentle and sympathetic woman who understood Balzac as did no one else, and who ignored her own troubles and sufferings for fear of grieving him in the midst of his struggles.

It was owing to the strong recommendation of M. de Berny, councilor at the Court at Paris, that Balzac obtained in the spring of 1826 his royal authorization to establish himself as a printer. During the year 1825-1826, Madame de Berny loaned Balzac 9250 francs; after his failure, she entered in name into the type-foundry association of Laurent et Balzac. She advanced to Balzac a total of 45,000 francs, and established her son, Alexandre de Berny, in the house where her protege had been unsuccessful.

Though Balzac states that he paid her in full, he can not be relied upon when he is dealing with figures, and MM. Hanotaux et Vicaire question this statement in relating the incident told by M. Arthur Rhone, an old friend of the de Berny family. M. de Berny told M. Rhone that the famous bust of Flore cost him 1500 francs. One day while visiting Balzac, his host told him to take whatever he liked as a reimbursement, since he could not pay him. M. de Berny took some trifle, and after Balzac's death, M. Charles Tuleu, knowing his fondness for the bust of Flore, brought it to him as a souvenir of their common friend. This might explain also why M. de Berny possessed a superb clock and other things coming from Balzac's collection.

It was while Balzac was living in a little apartment in the rue des Marais that his Dilecta began her daily visits, which continued so long, and which made such an impression on him.

Madame de Berny was of great help to Balzac in the social world and was perhaps instrumental in developing the friendship between him and the Duchesse de Castries. It was the Duc de Fitz-James who asked Balzac (1832) to write a sort of program for the Royalist party, and later (1834), wished him to become a candidate for deputy. This Duc de Fitz-James was the nephew of the godmother of Madame de Berny. It was to please him and the Duchesse de Castries that Balzac published a beautiful page about the Duchesse d'Angouleme.

Although Madame de Berny was of great help to Balzac in the financial and social worlds, of greater value was her literary influence over him. With good judgment and excellent taste she writes him: "Act, my dear, as though the whole multitude sees you from all sides at the height where you will be placed, but do not cry to it to admire you, for, on all sides, the strongest magnifying glasses will instantly be turned on you, and how does the most delightful object appear when seen through the microscope?"

She had had great experience in life, had suffered much and had seen many cruel things, but she brought Balzac consolation for all his pains and a confidence and serenity of which his appreciation is beautifully expressed: "I should be most unjust if I did not say that from 1823 to 1833 an angel sustained me through that horrible struggle. Madame de  Berny, though married, was like a God to me. She was a mother,  friend, family, counselor; she made the writer, she consoled the  young man, she created his taste, she wept like a sister, she  laughed, she came daily, like a beneficent sleep, to still his  sorrows. She did more; though under the control of a husband, she  found means to lend me as much as forty-five thousand francs, of  which I returned the last six thousand in 1836, with interest at  five per cent., be it understood. But she never spoke to me of my  debt, except now and then; without her, I should, assuredly, be  dead. She often divined that I had eaten nothing for days; she  provided for all with angelic goodness; she encouraged that pride  which preserves a man from baseness,&mdash;for which to-day my enemies reproach me, calling it a silly satisfaction in myself&mdash;the pride that Boulanger has, perhaps, pushed to excess in my portrait." Balzac's conception of women was formed largely from his association with Madame de Berny in his early manhood, and a reflection of these ideas is seen throughout his works. It was probably to give Madame de Berny pleasure that he painted the mature beauties which won for him so many feminine admirers.

It is doubtless Madame de Berny whom Balzac had in mind when in Madame Firmiani he describes the heroine: "Have you ever met, for your happiness, some woman whose harmonious tones give to her speech the charm that is no less conspicuous in  her manners, who knows how to talk and to be silent, who cares for  you with delicate feeling, whose words are happily chosen and her  language pure? Her banter caresses you, her criticism does not  sting; she neither preaches or disputes, but is interested in  leading a discussion, and stops at the right moment. Her manner is  friendly and gay, her politeness is unforced, her earnestness is  not servile; she reduces respect to a mere gentle shade; she never  tires you, and leaves you satisfied with her and yourself. You  will see her gracious presence stamped on the things she collects  about her. In her home everything charms the eye, and you breathe,  as it seems, your native air. This woman is quite natural. You  never feel an effort, she flaunts nothing, her feelings are expressed with simplicity because they are genuine. Though candid, she never wounds the most sensitive pride; she accepts men as God made them, pitying the victims, forgiving defects and absurdities, sympathizing with every age, and vexed with nothing because she has the tact of foreseeing everything. At once tender and gay, she first constrains and then consoles you. You love her so truly that if this angel does wrong, you are ready to justify her. Such was Madame Firmiani." It was to Madame de Berny's son, Alexandre, that Balzac dedicated Madame Firmiani, and he no doubt recognized the portrait.

Balzac often portrayed his own life and his association with women in his works. In commenting on La Peau de Chagrin, he writes: "Pauline is a real personage for me, only more lovely than I could describe her. If I have made her a dream it is because I did not  wish my secret to be discovered." And again, in writing of Louis Lambert: "You know when you work in tapestry, each stitch is a thought. Well, each line in this new work has been for me an abyss. It  contains things that are secrets between it and me." In portraying the yearnings and sufferings of Louis Lambert (Louis Lambert), of Felix de Vandenesse (Le Lys dans la Vallee) and of Raphael (La Peau de Chagrin), Balzac is picturing his own life. Pauline de Villenoix (Louis Lambert) and Pauline Gaudin (Le Peau de Chagrin) are possibly drawn from the same woman and have many characteristics of Madame de Berny. Madame de Mortsauf (Le Lys dans la Vallee) is Pauline, though not so outspoken. Then, is it not La Dilecta whom the novelist had in mind when Louis Lambert writes: "When I lay my head on your knees, I could wish to attract to you the eyes of the whole world, just as I long to concentrate in my  love every idea, every power within me"; and near the end of life, could not Madame de Berny say as did Pauline in the closing lines of Louis Lambert: "His heart was mine; his genius is with God"? The year 1832 was a critical one in the private life of Balzac. Madame de Berny, more than twenty years his senior, felt that they should sever their close connection and remain as friends only. Balzac's family had long been opposed to this intimate relationship and had repeatedly tried to find a rich wife for him. Madame de Castries, who had begun an anonymous correspondence with him, revealed her identity early in that year, and the first letter from l'Etrangere, who was soon to over-shadow all his other loves, arrived February 28, 1832. During the same period Mademoiselle de Trumilly rejected his hand. With so many distractions, Balzac probably did not suffer from this separation as did his Dilecta. But he never forgot her, and constantly compared other women with her, much to her detriment. He regarded her, indeed, as a woman of great superiority.

In June (1832), Balzac left Paris to spend several weeks with his friends, M. and Mme. de Margonne, and there at their chateau de Sache, he wrote Louis Lambert as a sort of farewell of soul to soul to the woman he had so loved, and whose equal in devotion he never found. In memory of his ten years' intimacy with her, he dedicated this work to her: Et nunc et semper dilectae dicatum 1822-1832. It is to her also, that he gave the beautiful Deveria portrait, resplendent with youth and strength.

M. Brunetiere has suggested that the woman whose traits best recall Madame de Berny is Marguerite Claes, the victim in La Recherche de l'Absolu, while the nature of Balzac's affection for this great friend of his youth has not been better expressed than in Balthasar Claes, she always ready to sacrifice all for him, and he, as Balthasar, always ready, in the interest of his "grand work," to rob her and make her desperate while loving her. However, Balzac states, in speaking of Madame de Berny: "At any moment death may take from me an angel who has watched over me for fourteen years; she, too, a flower of solitude, whom the  world had never touched, and who has been my star. My work is not  done without tears! The attentions due to her cast uncertainty  upon any time of which I could dispose, though she herself unites  with the doctor in advising me some strong diversions. She pushes  friendship so far as to hide her sufferings from me; she tries to  seem well for me. You understand that I have not drawn Claes to do  as he! Great God! what changes in her have been wrought in two  months! I am overwhelmed." M. le Breton has suggested that Madame de Berny is Catherine in La Derniere Fee, Madame d'Aiglemont in La Femme de trente Ans, and Madame de Beauseant in La Femme abandonnee, and has strengthened this last statement by pointing out that Gaston de Nueil came to Madame de Beauseant after she had been deserted by her lover, the Marquis d'Ajuda-Pinto, just as the youthful Balzac came to Madame de Berny after she had had a lover.

It is doubtless to this friendship that Balzac refers when he writes in the last lines of La Duchesse de Langeais: "It is only the last love of a woman that can satisfy the first love of a man." It is of interest to note that Antoinette is the Christian name of the heroine of this story. Throughout the Comedie humaine are seen quite young men who fall in love with women well advanced in years, as Calyste de Guenic with Mademoiselle Felicite des Touches in Beatrix, and Lucien de Rubempre with Madame Bargeton in Illusions perdues.

In Eugenie Grandet Balzac writes: "Do you know what Madame Campan used to say to us? 'My children, so long as a man is a Minister, adore him; if he falls, help to drag  him to the ditch. Powerful, he is a sort of deity; ruined, he is  below Marat in his sewer, because he is alive, and Marat, dead.  Life is a series of combinations, which must be studied and  followed if a good position is to be successfully maintained.'" Since Madame Campan was femme de chambre of Marie Antoinette, Balzac probably heard this maxim through Madame de Berny.

Although some writers state that Madame de Berny was one of Balzac's collaborators in composing the Physiologie du Mariage, he says, regarding this work: "I undertook the Physiologie du Mariage and the Peau de Chagrin against the advice of that angel whom I have lost." She may have inspired him, however, in writing Le Cure de Tours, as it is dated at her home, Saint-Firmin, 1832.

In 1833, Balzac wrote Madame Hanska that he had dedicated the fourth volume of the Scenes de la Vie privee to her, putting her seal at the head of l'Expiation, the last chapter of La Femme de trente Ans, which he was writing at the moment he received her first letter. But a person who was as a mother to him and whose caprices and even jealousy he was bound to respect, had exacted that this silent testimony should be repressed. He had the sincerity to avow to her both the dedication and its destruction, because he believed her to have a soul sufficiently lofty not to desire homage which would cause grief to one as noble and grand as she whose child he was, for she had rescued him when in youth he had nearly perished in the midst of griefs and shipwreck. He had saved the only copy of that dedication, for which he had been blamed as if it were a horrible coquetry, and wished her to keep it as a souvenir and as an expression of his thanks.

Balzac was ever loyal to Madame de Berny and refused to reveal her baptismal name to Madame Hanska; soon after their correspondence began he wrote her: "You have asked me the baptismal name of the Dilecta. In spite of my complete and blind faith, in spite of my sentiment for you, I cannot tell it to you; I have never told it. Would you have faith in me if I told it? No."

After 1834 Madame de Berny's health failed rapidly, and her last days were full of sorrow. Among her numerous family trials Balzac enumerates: "One daughter become insane, another daughter dead, the third dying, what blows!&mdash;And a wound more violent still, of which  nothing can be told. Finally, after thirty years of patience and  devotion, forced to separate from her husband under pain of dying  if she remained a few days longer. All this in a short space of  time. This is what I suffer through the heart that created me.  . . . Madame de Berny is much better; she has borne a last shock,  the illness of a beloved son whose brother has gone to bring him  home from Belgium. . . . Suddenly, the only son who resembles her,  a young man handsome as the day, tender and spiritual like  herself, like her full of noble sentiments, fell ill, and ill of a  cold which amounts to an affection of the lungs. The only child  out of nine with whom she can sympathize! Of the nine, only four  remain; and her youngest daughter has become hysterically insane, without any hope of cure. That blow nearly killed her. I was correcting the Lys beside her; but my affection was powerless even to temper this last blow. Her son (twenty-three years old) was in Belgium where he was directing an establishment of great importance. His brother Alexandre went for him, and he arrived a month ago, in a deplorable condition. This mother, without strength, almost expiring, sits up at night to nurse Armand. She has nurses and doctors. She implores me not to come and not to write to her."

Some secret pertaining to Madame de Berny remains untold. In 1834 Balzac writes Madame Hanska: "The greatest sorrows have overwhelmed Madame de Berny. She is far from me, at Nemours, where she is dying of her troubles. I cannot write you about them; they are things that can only be spoken of with the greatest secrecy." He might have revealed this secret to her in 1835 when he visited her in Vienna; the following secret, however, is not explained in subsequent letters, and Balzac did not see Madame Hanska again until seven years later in St. Petersburg: "I have much distress, even enormous distress in the direction of Madame de Berny; not from her directly but from her family. It is  not of a nature to be written. Some evening at Wierzchownia, when  the heart wounds are scars, I will tell it to you in murmurs so  that the spiders cannot hear, and so that my voice can go from my  lips to your heart. They are dreadful things, which dig into life  to the bone, deflowering all, and making one distrust all, except  you for whom I reserve these sighs." Though Madame de Berny may have been jealous of other women in her earlier association with Balzac, she evidently changed later, for he writes: "Alas! Madame de Berny is no better. The malady makes frightful progress, and I cannot express to you how grand, noble and  touching this soul of my life has been in these days measured by  illness, and with what fervor she desires that another be to me  what she has been. She knows the inward spring and nobility that  the habit of carrying all things to an idol gives me. My God is on  earth." Contrary to his family, Madame Carraud sympathized with Balzac in his devotion to Madame de Berny, and invited them to be her guests. In accepting he writes: "Her life is so much bound up in mine! Ah, no one can form any true idea of this deep attachment which sustains me in all my work, and  consoles me every moment in all I suffer. You can understand  something of this, you who know so well what friendship is, you  who are so affectionate, so good. . . . I thank you beforehand for  your offer of Frapesle to her. There, amid your flowers, and in  your gentle companionship, and the country life, if convalescence  is possible, and I venture to hope for it, she will regain life  and health." He apparently did not receive such sympathy from Madame Hanska in their early correspondence: "Why be displeased about a woman fifty-eight years old, who is a mother to me, who folds me in her heart and protects me from  stings? Do not be jealous of her; she would be so glad of our  happiness. She is an angel, sublime. There are angels of earth and  angels of heaven; she is of heaven." Madame de Berny's illness continued to grow more and more serious. The reading of the second number of Pere Goriot affected her so much that she had another heart attack. But as her illness and griefs changed and withered her, Balzac's affection for her redoubled. He did not realize how rapidly she was failing, for she did not wish him to see her unless she felt well and could appear attractive. On his return to France from a journey to Italy with Madame Marbouty, he was overcome with grief at the news of the death of Madame de Berny. He found on his table a letter from her son Alexandre briefly announcing his mother's death.

But the novelist did not cease to respect her criticism: "I resumed my work this morning; I am obeying the last words that Madame de Berny wrote me; 'I can die; I am sure that you have upon  your brow the crown I wished there. The Lys is a sublime work,  without spot or flaw. Only, the death of Madame de Mortsauf does  not need those horrible regrets; they injure the beautiful letter  she writes.' Therefore, to-day I have piously effaced a hundred  lines, which, according to many persons, disfigure that creation.  I have not regretted a single word, and each time that my pen was  drawn through one of them, never was the heart of man more deeply  stirred. I thought I saw that grand and sublime woman, that angel  of friendship, before me, smiling as she smiled to me when I used  a strength so rare,&mdash;the strength to cut off one's own limb and  feel neither pain nor regret in correcting, in conquering one's  self." Balzac was sincere in his friendship with Madame de Berny, and never ceased to revere her memory. The following appreciations of her worth are a few of the numerous beautiful tributes he has paid her: "I have lost the being whom I love most in the world. . . . She whom I have lost was more than a mother, more than a friend, more  than any human creature can be to another; it can only be  expressed by the word divine. She sustained me through storms of  trouble by word and deed and entire devotedness. If I am alive  this day, it is to her that it is due. She was everything to me;  and although during the last two years, time and illness kept us  apart, we saw each other through the distance. She inspired me;  she was for me a spiritual sun. Madame de Mortsauf in Le Lys dans  la Vallee, only faintly shadows forth some of the slighter  qualities of this woman; there is but a very pale reflection of  her, for I have a horror of unveiling my own private emotions to  the public, and nothing personal to myself will ever be known."

"Madame de Berny is dead. I can say no more on that point. My sorrow is not of a day; it will react upon my whole life. For a  year I had not seen her, nor did I see her in her last moments.  . . . She, who was always so lovingly severe to me, acknowledged  that the Lys was one of the finest books in the French language;  she decked herself at last with the crown which, fifteen years  earlier, I had promised her, and, always coquettish, she  imperiously forbade me to visit her, because she would not have me  near her unless she were beautiful and well. The letter deceived  me. . . . When I was wrecked the first time, in 1828, I was only  twenty-nine years old and I had an angel at my side. . . . There  is a blank which has saddened me. The adored is here no longer.  Every day I have occasion to deplore the eternal absence. Would  you believe that for six months I have not been able to go to  Nemours to bring away the things that ought to be in my sole possession? Every week I say to myself, 'It shall be this week! . . .' I was very unhappy in my youth, but Madame de Berny balanced all by an absolute devotion, which was understood to its full extent only when the grave had seized its prey. Yes, I was spoiled by that angel."

So faithful was Balzac to the memory of his Dilecta that nine years after her death, he was deeply affected on seeing at the Cour d'Assises a woman about forty-five years of age, who strongly resembled Madame de Berny, and who was being arraigned for deeds caused by her devotion to a reckless youth.