The coffee drunk, the chat over, Balzac would strike his pockets, and declaring they were empty, would exclaim:  “Upon my word, Mere Cognette, I have forgotten my purse, but the next time I’ll pay for this with the rest!” This habit gave “Mere Cognette” an extremely mediocre estimate of the novelist, and she retained a very bad impression of him.  Upon learning that he had, as she expressed it, “put me in one of his books,” she conceived a violent resentment which ended only with her death (1855).  “The brigand,” she exclaimed, “he would have done better to pay me what he owes me!”

Another poor old woman, playing a far more important role in Balzac’s work, lived at Issoudun and was called “La Rabouilleuse.”  For a long time, she had been the servant and mistress of a physician in the town.  This wretched creature had an end different to the one Balzac gave his Rabouilleuse, but just as miserable, for having grown old, sick, despoiled and without means, she did not have the patience to wait until death sought her, but ended her miserable existence by throwing herself into a well.

The doctor, it seems, at his death had left her a little home and some money, but his heirs had succeeded in robbing her of it entirely.  —­Perhaps this story is the origin of the contest of Dr. Rouget’s heirs with his mistress.

This Rabouilleuse had a daughter who inherited her name, there being nothing else to inherit; she was a dish washer at the Hotel de la Cloche, where Balzac often dined while at Issoudun.  Can it be that he saw her there and learned from her the story of her mother?

Balzac was acquainted also with Madame Carraud’s sister, Madame Philippe Nivet.  M. Nivet was an important merchant of Limoges, living in a pretty, historical home there.  It was in this home that Balzac visited early in his literary career, going there partly in order to visit these friends, partly to see Limoges, and partly to examine the scene in which he was going to place one of his most beautiful novels, Le Cure de Village.  While crossing a square under the conduct of the young M. Nivet, Balzac perceived at the corner of the rue de la Vieille-Poste and the rue de la Cite an old house, on the ground-floor of which was the shop of a dealer in old iron.  With the clearness of vision peculiar to him, he decided that this would be a suitable setting for the work of fiction he had already outlined in his mind.  It is here that are unfolded the first scenes of Le Cure de Village, while on one of the banks of the Vienne is committed the crime which forms the basis of the story.

CHAPTER III

LITERARY FRIENDS

MADAME GAY—­MADAME HAMELIN—­MADAME DE GIRARDIN—­MADAME
DESBORDES-VALMORE—­MADAME DORVAL

“O matre pulchra filia pulchrior!”