"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.[*]
[*] MM. Hanotaux et Vicaire think that it is Madame de Berny who was weighing on Balzac's soul when he relates, in /Le Cure de Village/, the tragic story of the young workman who dies from love without opening his lips.
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/.