as he wished.  But if he scolded her for this, she had other matters to worry her.  She was ever anxious about the safety of her letters, asked for many explanations of his conduct, for interpretations of various things in his works, and who certain friends were, so much so that his letters are filled with vindications of himself.  Even before they had ever met, he wrote her that he could not take a step that was not misinterpreted.  She seemed continually to be hearing of something derogatory to his character, and trying to investigate his actions.  The reader has had glimpses enough of Balzac’s life to understand what a task was hers.  Yet she doubtless sometimes accused him unnecessarily, and he in turn became impatient: 

“This letter contains two reproaches which have keenly affected me; and I think I have already told you that a few chance expressions would suffice to make me go to Wierzchownia, which would be a misfortune in my present perilous situation; but I would rather lose everything than lose a true friendship. . . .  In short, you distrust me at a distance, just as you distrusted me near by, without any reason.  I read quite despairingly the paragraph of your letter in which you do the honors of my heart to my mind, and sacrifice my whole personality to my brain. . . .  In your last letters, you know, you have believed things that are irreconcilable with what you know of me.  I cannot explain to myself your tendency to believe absurd calumnies.  I still remember your credulity in Geneva, when they said I was married.”

Even her own family added to her suspicions: 

“. . .  Your letter has crushed me more than all the heavy nonsense that jealousy and calumny, lawsuit and money matters have cast upon me.  My sensibility is a proof of friendship; there are none but those we love who can make us suffer.  I am not angry with your aunt, but I am angry that a person as distinguished as you say she is should be accessible to such base and absurd calumny.  But you yourself, at Geneva, when I told you I was as free as air, you believed me to be married, on the word of one of those fools whose trade it is to sell money.  I began to laugh.  Here, I no longer laugh, because I have the horrible privilege of being horribly calumniated.  A few more controversies like the last, and I shall retire to the remotest part of Touraine, isolating myself from everything, renouncing all, . . .  Think always that what I do has a reason and an object, that my actions are necessary.  There is, for two souls that are a little above others, something mortifying in repeating to you for the tenth time not to believe in calumny.  When you said to me three letters ago, that I gambled, it was just as true as my marriage at Geneva. . . .  You attribute to me little defects which I do not have to give yourself the pleasure of scolding me.  No one is less extravagant than I; no one is willing to live with more economy.