“His heart was mine; his genius is with God”?

The year 1832 was a critical one in the private life of Balzac.  Madame de Berny, more than twenty years his senior, felt that they should sever their close connection and remain as friends only.  Balzac’s family had long been opposed to this intimate relationship and had repeatedly tried to find a rich wife for him.  Madame de Castries, who had begun an anonymous correspondence with him, revealed her identity early in that year, and the first letter from l’Etrangere, who was soon to over-shadow all his other loves, arrived February 28, 1832.  During the same period Mademoiselle de Trumilly rejected his hand.  With so many distractions, Balzac probably did not suffer from this separation as did his Dilecta.  But he never forgot her, and constantly compared other women with her, much to her detriment.  He regarded her, indeed, as a woman of great superiority.

In June (1832), Balzac left Paris to spend several weeks with his friends, M. and Mme. de Margonne, and there at their chateau de Sache, he wrote Louis Lambert as a sort of farewell of soul to soul to the woman he had so loved, and whose equal in devotion he never found.  In memory of his ten years’ intimacy with her, he dedicated this work to her:  Et nunc et semper dilectae dicatum 1822-1832.  It is to her also, that he gave the beautiful Deveria portrait, resplendent with youth and strength.[*]

[*] MM.  Hanotaux et Vicaire think that it is Madame de Berny who was
    weighing on Balzac’s soul when he relates, in Le Cure de
    Village, the tragic story of the young workman who dies from love
    without opening his lips.

M. Brunetiere has suggested that the woman whose traits best recall Madame de Berny is Marguerite Claes, the victim in La Recherche de l’Absolu, while the nature of Balzac’s affection for this great friend of his youth has not been better expressed than in Balthasar Claes, she always ready to sacrifice all for him, and he, as Balthasar, always ready, in the interest of his “grand work,” to rob her and make her desperate while loving her.  However, Balzac states, in speaking of Madame de Berny: 

“At any moment death may take from me an angel who has watched over me for fourteen years; she, too, a flower of solitude, whom the world had never touched, and who has been my star.  My work is not done without tears!  The attentions due to her cast uncertainty upon any time of which I could dispose, though she herself unites with the doctor in advising me some strong diversions.  She pushes friendship so far as to hide her sufferings from me; she tries to seem well for me.  You understand that I have not drawn Claes to do as he!  Great God! what changes in her have been wrought in two months!  I am overwhelmed.”

M. le Breton has suggested that Madame de Berny is Catherine in La Derniere Fee, Madame d’Aiglemont in La Femme de trente Ans, and Madame de Beauseant in La Femme abandonnee, and has strengthened this last statement by pointing out that Gaston de Nueil came to Madame de Beauseant after she had been deserted by her lover, the Marquis d’Ajuda-Pinto, just as the youthful Balzac came to Madame de Berny after she had had a lover.