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_.

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
w