So faithful was Balzac to the memory of his Dilecta that nine years after her death, he was deeply affected on seeing at the Cour d’Assises a woman about forty-five years of age, who strongly resembled Madame de Berny, and who was being arraigned for deeds caused by her devotion to a reckless youth.

          LA DUCHESSE DE CASTRIES.—­MADEMOISELLE DE TRUMILLY

“He who has not seen, at some ball of Madame, Duchesse de Berry, glide airily, scarcely touching the floor, so moving that one perceived in her only grace before knowing whether she was a beauty, a young woman with blond, deep-golden hair; he who has not seen appear then the young Marquise de Castries in a fete, cannot, without doubt, form an idea of this new beauty, charming, aerial, praised and honored in the salons of the Restoration.”

Balzac had a brief, yet ardent friendship with the Duchesse de Castries which ended so unhappily for him that one might say:  “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned.”  Madame de Castries was the daughter of the Duchesse (nee Fitz-James) and the Duc de Maille.  She did not become a duchess until in 1842, and bore the title of marquise previous to that time.  Separated from her husband as the result of a famous love affair, the Marquise gathered round her a group of intellectual people, among whom were the writers Balzac, Musset, Sainte-Beuve, etc., and continued active in literary and artistic circles until her death (1861).

On Balzac’s return to Paris after a prolonged visit with his friends at Sache during the month of September, 1831, he received an anonymous letter, dated at Paris, a circumstance which was with him of rather frequent occurrence, as with many men of letters.

This lady criticized the Physiologie du Mariage, to which Balzac replies, defending his position: 

“The Physiologie du Mariage, madame, was a work undertaken for the purpose of defending the cause of women.  I knew that if, with the view of inculcating ideas favorable to their emancipation and to a broad and thorough system of education for them, I had gone to work in a blundering way, I should at best, have been regarded as nothing more than an author of a theory more or less plausible.  I was therefore, obliged to clothe my ideas, to disguise them under a new shape, in biting, incisive words that should lay hold on the mind of my readers, awaken their attention and leave behind, reflections upon which they might meditate.  Thus then any woman who has passed through the ‘storms of life’ would see that I attribute the blame of all faults committed by the wives, entirely to their husbands.  It is, in fact, a plenary absolution.  Besides this, I plead for the natural and inalienable rights of woman.  A happy marriage is impossible unless there be a perfect acquaintance between the two before marriage—­a knowledge of each other’s ways, habits and character.  And