regret in correcting, in conquering one's
self."

Balzac was sincere in his friendship with Madame de Berny, and never
ceased to revere her memory. The following appreciations of her worth
are a few of the numerous beautiful tributes he has paid her:

"I have lost the being whom I love most in the world. . . . She
whom I have lost was more than a mother, more than a friend, more
than any human creature can be to another; it can only be
expressed by the word _divine_. She sustained me through storms of
trouble by word and deed and entire devotedness. If I am alive
this day, it is to her that it is due. She was everything to me;
and although during the last two years, time and illness kept us
apart, we saw each other through the distance. She inspired me;
she was for me a spiritual sun. Madame de Mortsauf in _Le Lys dans
la Vallee_, only faintly shadows forth some of the slighter
qualities of this woman; there is but a very pale reflection of
her, for I have a horror of unveiling my own private emotions to
the public, and nothing personal to myself will ever be known."

"Madame de Berny is dead. I can say no more on that point. My
sorrow is not of a day; it will react upon my whole life. For a
year I had not seen her, nor did I see her in her last moments.
. . . _She_, who was always so lovingly severe to me, acknowledged
that the _Lys_ was one of the finest books in the French language;
she decked herself at last with the crown which, fifteen years
earlier, I had promised her, and, always coquettish, she
imperiously forbade me to visit her, because she would not have me
near her unless she were beautiful and well. The letter deceived
me. . . . When I was wrecked the first time, in 1828, I was only
twenty-nine years old and I had an angel at my side. . . . There
is a blank which has saddened me. The adored is here no longer.
Every day I have occasion to deplore the eternal absence. Would
you believe that for six months I have not been able to go to
Nemours to bring away the things that ought to be in my sole
possession? Every week I say to myself, 'It shall be this week!
. . .' I was very unhappy in my youth, but Madame de Berny
balanced all by an absolute devotion, which was understood to its
full extent only when the grave had seized its prey. Yes, I was
spoiled by that angel."[*]

[*] Madame de Berny died July 27, 1836.

So faithful was Balzac to