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!—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."[*]
[*] /Lettres a l'Etrangere. Various writers in speaking of Madame de Berny, state that she had eight children; others, nine. Balzac remarks frequently that she had nine. Among others, Madame Ruxton says that she had eight. She gives their names and dates of birth. The explanation of this difference is probably found in the following: "I am going to fulfil a rather sad duty this morning. The daughter of Madame de B . . . and of Campi . . . asks for me. In 1824, they wished me to marry her. She was bewitchingly beautiful, a flower of Bengal! After twenty years, I am going to see her again! At forty years of age! She asks a service of me; doubtless a literary ambition! . . . I am going there. . . . Three o'clock. I was sure of it! I have seen Julie, to whom and for whom I wrote the verses: 'From the midst of those torrents of glory and of light, etc.:' which are in /Illusions perdues/. . . ." Neither the name /Julie/ nor the date of her birth is given by Madame Ruxton.
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: