While Madame de Balzac was certainly requested to do far more than a
son usually expects of his mother, her tantalizing letters were a
source of great annoyance to him, as is seen in the following:

"What you say about my silence is one of those things which, to use
your expression, makes me grasp my heart with both hands; for it
is incredible I should be able to produce all I do. (I am obeying
the most rigorous necessity); so if I am to write, I ought to have
more time, and when I rest, I wish to lay down and not take up my
pen again. Really, my poor dear mother, this ought to be
understood between us once for all; otherwise, I shall have to
renounce all epistolary intercourse. . . . And this morning I was
about to make the first dash at my work, when your letter came and
completely upset me. Do you think it possible to have artistic
inspirations after being brought suddenly face to face with such a
picture of my miseries as you have traced? Do you think that if I
did not feel them, I should work as I do? . . . Farewell, my good
mother. Try and achieve impossibilities, which is what I am doing
on my side. My life is one perpetual miracle. . . . You ask me to
write you in full detail; but, my dear mother, have you yet to be
told what my existence is? When I am able to write, I work at my
manuscripts; when I am not working at my manuscripts, I am
thinking of them; I never have any rest. How is it my friends are
not aware of this? . . . I beg of you, my dear mother, in the name
of my heavy work, never to write me that such a work is good, and
such another bad: you upset me for a fortnight."

Balzac appreciated what his mother did for him, and while he never
fully repaid her the money she had so often requested of him, she