She evidently had more influence over their mother than had he, for he asked her when on the verge of taking Madame de Balzac into his home again, to assist him in making her reasonable: 

“If she likes, she can be very happy, but tell her that she must encourage happiness and not frighten it away.  She will have near her a confidential attendant and a servant, and that she will be taken care of in the way she likes.  Her room is as elegant as I can make it. . . .  Make her promise not to object to what I wish her to do as regards her dress:  I do not wish her to be dressed otherwise than as she ought to be, it would give me great pain . . .”

During his prolonged stay in Russia, he requested his sister to conceal from their mother the true condition of his illness and the uncertainty of his marriage, and to entreat her to avoid anything in her letters which might cause him pain.  Feeling that she would never have allowed such a thing had she known of it, he informed her in detail concerning their mother’s letter which had caused him endless trouble.

While Madame Surville was a great stimulus to Balzac early in his literary career, she in turn received the deepest sympathy from him in her financial struggle, and, while he was so happy and was living in such luxury in Russia, he only regretted that he could not assist her, for he had enjoyed hospitality in her home.

Madame Surville had at least one of her mother’s traits—­that of continually harassing Balzac by trying to marry him to some rich woman; once she had even chosen for him the goddaughter of Louis-Philippe.  But the most serious breach of relations between the two resulted from her failure to approve of Balzac’s adoration of Madame Hanska.  While admitting the extreme beauty of the celebrated Daffinger portrait, she was jealous of his Predilecta.  When she saw the bound proofs of La Femme superieure which he had intended for Madame Hanska, she felt that she was being neglected.  In the end, he robbed his Chatelaine to the profit of his cara sorella.  But when she became impatient at Balzac’s prolonged stay at Wierzchownia, he resented it, explaining that marriage is like cream—­a change of atmosphere would spoil it,—­that bad marriages could be made with the utmost ease, but good ones required infinite precautions and scrupulous attention.  He tried to make her see the advantage of this marriage, writing her: 

“Consider, dear Laura, none of us are as yet, so to speak, arrived; if, instead of being obliged to work in order to live, I had become the husband of one of the cleverest, the best-born, and best-connected of women, who is also possessed of a solid though circumscribed fortune, in spite of the wish of the lady to live retired, to have no intercourse even with the family, I should still be in a position to be much better able to be of use to you all.  I have the certainty of the warm