In depicting Maxime de Trailles, the novelist perhaps had in mind M.
de Montrond, about whom the Duchess had told him. Again, many
characteristics of her son, Napoleon d'Abrantes, are seen in La
Palferine, one of the characters of the _Comedie humaine_.

If Madame de Berny is Madame de Mortsauf in _Le Lys dans la Vallee_,
Madame d'Abrantes has some traits of Lady Dudley, of whom Madame de
Mortsauf was jealous. The Duchess gave him encouragement and
confidence, and Balzac might have been thinking of her when he made
the beautiful Lady Dudley say: "I alone have divined all that you were
worth." After Balzac's affection for Madame de Berny was rekindled,
Madame d'Abrantes, who was jealous of her, had a falling out with him.

It was probably Madame Junot who related to Balzac the story of the
necklace of Madame Regnault de Saint-Jean d'Angely, to which allusion
is made in his _Physiologie du Mariage_, also an anecdote which is
told in the same book abut General Rapp, who had been an intimate
friend of General Junot. At this time Balzac knew few women of the
Empire; he did not frequent the home of the Countess Merlin until
later. While Madame d'Abrantes was not a duchess by birth, Madame Gay
was not a duchess at all, and Madame Hamelin still further removed
from nobility.

It is doubtless to Madame d'Abrantes that he owes the subject of _El
Verdugo_, which he places in the period of the war with Spain; to her
also was due the information about the capture of Senator Clement de
Ris, from which he writes _Une tenebreuse Affaire_.

M. Rene Martineau, in proving that Balzac got his ideas for _Une
tenebreuse Affaire_ from Madame d'Abrantes, states that this is all