une, with the hope that absence would loosen the bonds of
affection which united him and Madame de Berny, and with an _arriere
pensee_ about another charming personality whom he might meet on his
travels, Balzac left Paris for six months, and began his tour by
paying a visit to M. de Margonne at Sache. There he wrote "Louis
Lambert" as a last farewell to Madame de Berny; and in memory of his
ten years' intimacy with her, on the title-page were the dates 1822
and 1832, and underneath the words "Et nunc et semper." The manuscript
was sent to her for criticism, and she wrote a charming letter[*] on
receipt of it to Angouleme, where Balzac was staying with Madame
Carraud. In this she shows the utmost tenderness and gentle
playfulness; but while modestly deprecating her power to perform the
task he demands from her, which she says should be entrusted to Madame
Carraud, she has the noble disinterestedness to point out to him where
she considers he has erred. She tells him that, after reading the book
through twice, and endeavouring to see it as a whole, she _thinks_ he
has undertaken an impossible task, and that, trying to represent
absolute truth in its action, he has attempted what is the province of
God alone. Then, with the utmost tact and delicacy, she touches on a
difficult point, and says that when Goethe and Byron attempt to paint
the aspirations of a superior being, we admire their breadth of view,
and wish we could aid them with our minds to reach the unattainable;
but that an author who announces that he has swept to the utmost range
of thought shocks us by his vanity, and she begs Balzac to eliminate
certain phrases in his book which sound as though he had this belief.
She finished thus: "Manage, my dear one, that every one shall see you
from everywhere by the height at which you have placed yourself, but
do not claim their admiration, for from all parts strong
magnifying-glasses will be turned on you; and what becomes of the most
delightful object when seen through the microscope?" Loving Balzac so
tenderly, growing old so quickly, with Madame de Castries and the
unknown Russian ready to seize the empire which she had abdicated
willingly, though at bitter cost, what a temptation it must have been
to leave these words unsaid, and now that she was parting from Balzac
to accord him the unstinted admiration for which he yearned! That
Madame de Berny thought of him only, of herself not at all, speaks
volumes for the no