She served the novelist as a spy when he and Gavault disagreed.  When Lirette visited Paris, she treated her very kindly and gave up her own room in order to arrange comfortable quarters for her.  She had some relatives who had entered a convent, and she talked of ending her days in one, but Balzac begged her to keep house for him.  He felt that she was born for that!  Madame de Brugnolle was of much help to him in looking after Lirette’s financial affairs, visiting her in the convent, and carrying messages to her from him.  Many times she comforted him by promising to look out for his family, even consenting to go to Wierzchownia, if necessary, as Lirette’s visit had helped her to realize as never before the angelic sweetness of his Loup.

In return for this devotion, he took her with him to Frankfort and to Bury to visit Madame de Bocarme.  He celebrated the birthday of the montagnarde in 1844, giving her some very attractive presents.  Her economy and devotion seemed to increase with time, and enabled him to travel without any worry about his home.  What must not have been the trial to him when this happy household came to be broken up later by her marriage!

Madame Delannoy was an old family friend of the Balzacs.  She aided Balzac in his financial troubles as early in his career as 1826, and though he remained indebted to her for more than twenty years, he tried to repay her and was ever grateful to her, calling her his second mother.  The following, written late in his career, reveals his general attitude towards her: 

“I have just written a long letter to Madame Delannoy, with whom I have settled my business; but this still leaves me with obligations of conscientiousness towards her, which my first book will acquit.  No one could have behaved more like a mother, or been more adorable than she has been throughout all this business.  She has been a mother, I will be a son.”

But if she remained one of his principal creditors, she received many literary proofs of his appreciation.  As early as 1831 he dedicated to her a volume of his Romans et Contes philosophiques, but later changed the title to Etudes philosophiques, and dedicated to her La Recherche de L’Absolu: 

 “To Madame Josephine Delannoy, nee Doumerg.

“Madame, may God grant that this book have a longer life than mine!  The gratitude which I have vowed to you, and which I hope will equal your almost maternal affection for me, would last beyond the limits prescribed for human feeling.  This sublime privilege of prolonging the life in our hearts by the life of our works would be, if there were ever a certainty in this respect, a recompense for all the labor it costs those whose ambition is such.  Yet again I say:  May God grant it!

“DE BALZAC.”

Balzac once thought of buying from Madame Delannoy a house that was left her by her friend, M. Ferraud, but which she could not keep.  He felt that this would be advantageous to them both, but the plan was never carried out.  Besides their financial and literary relations, their social relations were most cordial.  He speaks of accompanying her and her daughter to the Italian opera twice during the absence of Madame Visconti.