was in charge of the Government powder-works,
or at Frapesle in Berry, where Madame Carraud had a country house. She
was a woman of much intelligence and ambition, high-principled and
possessing much common sense. Balzac occasionally complained that she
was a little wanting in softness; but, nevertheless, he invariably
turned to her for comfort in the vicissitudes of his more passionate
attachments. He was also much attached to M. Carraud, a man of great
scientific attainments and a good husband, but, to his wife's despair,
utterly lacking in energy and ambition; so that instead of taking the
position to which by his abilities he was entitled, he soon retired
altogether from public life, and Madame Carraud, who should, according
to Balzac, have found scope for her talents in Paris, was buried in
the country. Nevertheless, the Carrauds were a happy couple, genuinely
devoted to each other; and Madame Carraud cited the instance of their
affection, in spite of the difference of their point of view on many
subjects, when in 1833 she wrote to Honore urging him to marry.[*]
"There is no need to tell you that my husband and I are not
sympathetic in everything. We are so unlike each other that the same
objects appear quite differently to us. Yet I know the happiness about
which I speak. We both feel it in the same degree, though in a
different way. I would not give it up for the fullest existence,
according to generally received ideas. I have not an empty moment."

[*] Letter from Madame Carraud in the Vicomte de Spoelberch de
Lovenjoul's collection, published in _La Revue Bleue_, November
21st, 1903.

She was an ardent politician, and we gain much of our knowledge of
Balzac's political views from his letters to her when he wished to
become a deputy; while she also possessed the faculty which he valued
most in his women friends, that of intelligent literary criticism. She
could be critical on other points as well; and, like Madame Hanska,
blamed Balzac for mobility of ideas and inconstancy of resolution,
which she said wasted his intellect. She complained that, in the time
that he might have used to bring one plan successfully to completion,
he generally started ten or twelve new ones, all of which vanished
into smoke, and brought him no advantage.[*]

[*] "L'Ecole des Menages" in "Autour de Honore de Balzac," by the
Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul.

Hardly a year passed without Balzac spending some time at t