“One daughter become insane, another daughter dead, the third dying, what blows!—­And a wound more violent still, of which nothing can be told.  Finally, after thirty years of patience and devotion, forced to separate from her husband under pain of dying if she remained a few days longer.  All this in a short space of time.  This is what I suffer through the heart that created me. . . .  Madame de Berny is much better; she has borne a last shock, the illness of a beloved son whose brother has gone to bring him home from Belgium. . . .  Suddenly, the only son who resembles her, a young man handsome as the day, tender and spiritual like herself, like her full of noble sentiments, fell ill, and ill of a cold which amounts to an affection of the lungs.  The only child out of nine with whom she can sympathize!  Of the nine, only four remain; and her youngest daughter has become hysterically insane, without any hope of cure.  That blow nearly killed her.  I was correcting the Lys beside her; but my affection was powerless even to temper this last blow.  Her son (twenty-three years old) was in Belgium where he was directing an establishment of great importance.  His brother Alexandre went for him, and he arrived a month ago, in a deplorable condition.  This mother, without strength, almost expiring, sits up at night to nurse Armand.  She has nurses and doctors.  She implores me not to come and not to write to her."[*]

[*] Lettres a l’Etrangere.  Various writers in speaking of Madame de
    Berny, state that she had eight children; others, nine.  Balzac
    remarks frequently that she had nine.  Among others, Madame Ruxton
    says that she had eight.  She gives their names and dates of birth. 
    The explanation of this difference is probably found in the
    following:  “I am going to fulfil a rather sad duty this morning. 
    The daughter of Madame de B . . . and of Campi . . . asks for me. 
    In 1824, they wished me to marry her.  She was bewitchingly
    beautiful, a flower of Bengal!  After twenty years, I am going to
    see her again!  At forty years of age!  She asks a service of me;
    doubtless a literary ambition! . . .  I am going there. . . .  Three
    o’clock.  I was sure of it!  I have seen Julie, to whom and for whom
    I wrote the verses:  ’From the midst of those torrents of glory and
    of light, etc.:’  which are in Illusions perdues_. . . .”  Neither
    the name Julie nor the date of her birth is given by Madame
    Ruxton.

Some secret pertaining to Madame de Berny remains untold.  In 1834 Balzac writes Madame Hanska:  “The greatest sorrows have overwhelmed Madame de Berny.  She is far from me, at Nemours, where she is dying of her troubles.  I cannot write you about them; they are things that can only be spoken of with the greatest secrecy.”  He might have revealed this secret to her in 1835 when he visited her in Vienna; the following secret, however, is not explained in subsequent letters, and Balzac did not see Madame Hanska again until seven years later in St. Petersburg: