of the various parts of a living organism. Nothing discouraged him,
neither physical fatigue nor the mental strain of carrying on so huge
an enterprise. Then, when it seemed as though he was on the point of
bending beneath the burden, a secret consolation caused him once again
to square his shoulders. On the floor above the printing house he had
fitted up a little apartment quite luxuriously, and there each day he
received Mme. de Berny, who came to bring him the comfort of brave and
tender words, which seemed to him to open the golden gates of the
future. For Mme. de Berny these were the hours in which she could lay
bare her ardent and sensitive soul, while for Balzac they were a whole
education in sentiment and social graces at the hands of a woman rich
in sensibility and in memories. At this period she exerted a most
effective influence over the ideas of her young friend; she pictured to
him the conditions of fashionable life prior to the Revolution, with
its great ladies, its court intrigues, and its mysteries of passion and
ambition; and she imbued him with monarchical principles. But, above
all else, it was she herself who was the life-giving flame which fired
his genius. All of Balzac's life seems to have been impregnated with
these first lessons received from her, and he could never recall
without emotion the aid that he received from Mme. de Berny during
those early years of hard struggles. In 1837 he wrote as follows to
Mme. Hanska:

"I should be very unjust if I did not say that from 1823 to 1833 an
angel sustained me through that hideous battle. Mme. de B..., although
married, has been like an angel to me. She has been mother, sweetheart,
family, friend and counsellor; she has formed the writer, she has
consoled the man, she has created my taste; she has wept and laughed
with me like a sister, she has come day after day and every day to lull
my sorrows, like a beneficent sleep. She has done even more, because,