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 duty this morning.
The daughter of Madame de B . . . and of Campi . . . asks for me.
In 1824, they wished me to marry her. She was bewitchingly
beautiful, a flower of Bengal! After twenty years, I am going to