She was many years younger than her husband--a beauty and an heiress;
and she evidently had her own way with the easy-going old M. de
Balzac, and was the moving spirit in the household: so that the ease
and absence of friction in her early life must have made her
subsequent troubles and humiliations especially galling. Besides
Honore, she had three children: Laure, afterwards Madame Surville;
Laurence, who died young; and Henry, the black sheep of the family,
who returned from the colonies, after having made an unsatisfactory
marriage, and who, during the last years of Honore de Balzac's life,
required constant monetary help from his relations.

Her two young children were Madame de Balzac's favourites, and they
and their affairs gave her constant trouble. In 1822 Laurence married
a M. Saint-Pierre de Montzaigle, apparently a good deal older than
herself; and Honore gives a very _couleur de rose_ account of his
future brother-in-law's family, in a letter written at the time of the
engagement to Laure, who was already married. He does not seem so
charmed with the bridegroom, _il troubadouro_, as with his
surroundings, and remarks that he has lost his top teeth, and is very
conceited, but will do well enough--as a husband. Every one is
delighted at the marriage; but Laure can imagine _maman's_ state of
nervous excitement from her recollection of the last few days before
her own wedding, and can fancy that he and Laurence are not enjoying
themselves. "Nature surrounds roses with thorns, and pleasures with a
crowd of troubles. Mamma follows the example of nature."[*]

[*] "H. de Balzac--Correspondence," vol. i. p. 41.

Laurence's death, in 1826, must have been a terrible grief to the poor