bound up in mine! Ah, no one can form any true
idea of this deep attachment which sustains me in all my work, and
consoles me every moment in all I suffer. You can understand
something of this, you who know so well what friendship is, you
who are so affectionate, so good. . . . I thank you beforehand for
your offer of Frapesle to her. There, amid your flowers, and in
your gentle companionship, and the country life, if convalescence
is possible, and I venture to hope for it, she will regain life
and health."

He apparently did not receive such sympathy from Madame Hanska in
their early correspondence:

"Why be displeased about a woman fifty-eight years old, who is a
mother to me, who folds me in her heart and protects me from
stings? Do not be jealous of her; she would be so glad of our
happiness. She is an angel, sublime. There are angels of earth and
angels of heaven; she is of heaven."

Madame de Berny's illness continued to grow more and more serious. The
reading of the second number of _Pere Goriot_ affected her so much
that she had another heart attack. But as her illness and griefs
changed and withered her, Balzac's affection for her redoubled. He did
not realize how rapidly she was failing, for she did not wish him to
see her unless she felt well and could appear attractive. On his
return to France from a journey to Italy with Madame Marbouty, he was
overcome with grief at the news of the death of Madame de Berny. He
found on his table a letter from her son Alexandre briefly announcing
his mother's death.

But the novelist did not cease to respect her criticism:

"I resumed my work this morning; I am obeying the last words that
Madame de Berny wrote me; 'I can die; I am sure that you have upon
your brow the crown I wished there. The _Lys_ is a sublime work,
without spot or flaw. Only, the death of Madame de Mortsauf does
not need those horrible regrets; they injure the beautiful letter
she writes.' Therefore, to-day I have piously effaced a hundred
lines, which, according to many persons, disfigure that creation.
I have not regretted a single word, and each time that my pen was
drawn through one of them, never was the heart of man more deeply
stirred. I thought I saw that grand and sublime woman, that angel
of friendship, before me, smiling as she smiled to me when I used
a strength so rare,--the strength to cut off one's own limb and
feel neither pain nor