with my aunt, but also with several of his friends, Victor Hugo among
others, who could not bring themselves to forgive him for thinking
more of the great and illustrious families with which his marriage had
connected him than of his own genius and marvelous talents. Hugo most
unjustly accused my aunt of encouraging this "aberration," as he
called it, of Balzac's mind; in which judgment of her he was vastly
mistaken, because she was the person who suffered the most through it,
and by it. But this unwarranted suspicion made him antagonistic to
her, and probably inspired the famous description he left us of
Balzac's last hours in the little volume called _Choses vues_. This
was partly the cause why people afterwards said that my aunt's married
life with the great writer had been far from happy, and had resolved
itself into a great disappointment for both of them. The reality was
very different, because during the few months they lived together,
they had known and enjoyed complete and absolute happiness, and Madame
de Balzac's heart was forever broken when she closed with pious hands
the eyes of the man who had occupied such an immense place in her
heart as well as in her life. Many years later, talking with me about
those last sad hours when she watched with such tender devotion by his
bedside, she told me with accents that are still ringing in my ears
with their wail of agony: I lived through a hell of suffering on that
day.

Nevertheless she bore up bravely under the load of the unmerited
misfortunes which had fallen upon her. Her first care, after she had
become for the second time a widow, was to pay Balzac's debts, which
she proceeded to do with the thoroughness she always brought to bear
in everything she undertook. She remained upon the most affectionate
terms with his family, and it was due to her that Balzac's mother was
able to spend her last years in comfort. These facts speak for