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."[*]
[*] Madame de Berny died July 27, 1836.
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.
LA DUCHESSE DE CASTRIES.—MADEMOISELLE DE TRUMILLY
"He who has not seen, at some ball of Madame, Duchesse de Berry, glide airily, scarcely touching the floor, so moving that one perceived in her only grace before knowing whether she was a beauty, a young woman with blond, deep-golden hair; he who has not seen appear then the young Marquise de Castries in a fete, cannot, without doubt, form an idea of this new beauty, charming, aerial, praised and honored in the salons of the Restoration."
Balzac had a brief, yet ardent friendship with the Duchesse de Castries which ended so unhappily for him that one might say: "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned." Madame de Castries was the daughter of the Duchesse (nee Fitz-James) and the Duc de Maille. She did not become a duchess until in 1842, and bore the title of marquise previous to that time. Separated from her husband as the result of a famous love affair, the Marquise gathered round her a group of intellectual people, among whom were the writers Balzac, Musset, Sainte-Beuve, etc., and continued active in literary and artistic circles until her death (1861).
On Balzac's return to Paris after a prolonged visit with his friends at Sache during the month of September, 1831, he received an anonymous letter, dated at Paris, a circumstance which was with him of rather frequent occurrence, as with many men of letters.
This lady criticized the /Physiologie du Mariage/, to which Balzac replies, defending his position: