that he found himself flung headlong into business. He had reached the
point where he was ready to accept any proposition of a promising
nature, in his eagerness to become free, to escape the strict
surveillance of his family and the reproaches of his mother, and
furthermore he was urged into this path by a certain Mme. de Berny, a
woman who loved him and who wished to see him become a great man, for
she alone recognised his genius.

How and when had they become acquainted? Perhaps at Paris, since the de
Bernys dwelt at No. 3 Rue Portefoin, and the Balzacs at No. 17, perhaps
later on at Villeparisis, as a result of the neighbourly relations
between the two families. However this may be, Mme. de Berny exerted a
profound and decisive influence upon Honore de Balzac; she was his
first love and, it should be added, the only real one, if we may judge
by the length of time that he cherished an unchanging memory of her.

Laure Antoinette Hinner was born at Versailles on May 24th, 1777; she
was the daughter of a German harpist who had been summoned from Wetzlar
to the Court of France, and her mother was Louise Guelpee de Laborde,
lady-in-waiting to Marie-Antoinette. She had no less personages than
the king and queen for her god-father and god-mother, and she grew up
within sound of the festivities of the Trianon, in an atmosphere of
frivolity and exaggerated refinements. Her mother, left a widow when
the child was barely ten years old, took a second husband, Francois
Regnier de Jarjayes, a fervent royalist, involved in all the plots
which had for their object the deliverance of the royal family. After
the brilliant days of court life, she lived through the tragic hours of
the Revolution, in the midst of conspirators, and in an atmosphere of
restlessness and anxiety. In 1793, Laure Hinner, at the age of fifteen
years and ten months, was married at Livry to Gabriel de Berny, who was