ished 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 du