Balzac could not remain indifferent after Madame de Girardin had thus brought his celebrated cane into prominence.  He was absent from Paris when the novel appeared, and scarcely had he returned when he wrote her (May 27, 1836), cordially thanking her as an old friend.  He also after this made peace with M. de Girardin.  But one difficulty was scarcely settled before another began, and the ever faithful Delphine was continually occupied in trying to establish peace.  Her numerous letters to Balzac are filled with such expressions as:  “Come to-morrow, come to dinner.  Come, we can not get along without you!  Come, Paris is an awful bore.  We need you to laugh.  Come dine with us, come!  Come!!!  Now come have dinner with us to-morrow or day after to-morrow, to-day, or even yesterday, every day!!  A thousand greetings from Emile.”  Thus with her hospitality and merry disposition, she bridged many a break between her husband and Balzac.

Finally, not knowing what to do, she decided not to let Balzac mention the latest quarrel.  When he referred to it, she replied:  “Oh, no, I beg you, speak to Theophile Gautier.  If is not for nothing that I have given him charge of the feuilleton of the Presse.  That no longer concerns me, make arrangements with him.”  Then she counseled her husband to have Theophile Gautier direct this part of the Presse in order not to contend with Balzac, but the novelist was so unreasonable that M. de Girardin had to intervene.  “My beautiful Queen,” once wrote Theophile to Delphine, “if this continues, rather than be caught between the anvil Emile and the hammer Balzac, I shall return my apron to you.  I prefer planting cabbage or raking the walls of your garden.”  To this, Madame de Girardin replied:  “I have a gardener with whom I am very well satisfied, thank you; continue to maintain order du palais.”

The relations between M. de Girardin and the novelist became so strained that Balzac visited Madame de Girardin only when he knew he would not encounter her husband.  M. de Girardin retired early in the evening; his wife received her literary friends after the theater or opera.  At this hour, Balzac was sure not to meet her husband, whose non-appearance permitted the intimate friends to discuss literature at their ease.

Although Madame de Girardin was married to a publicist, she did not like journalists, so she conceived the fancy of writing a satirical comedy, L’Ecole des Journalistes, in which she painted the journalists in rather unflattering colors.  The work was received by the committee of the Theatre-Francais, but the censors stopped the performance.  Balzac was angry at this interdiction, for he too disliked journalists, but Madame de Girardin took the censorship philosophically.  In her salon she read L’Ecole des Journalistes to her literary friends; there Balzac figured prominently, dressed for this occasion in his blue suit with engraved gold buttons, making his coarse Rabelaisian laughter heard throughout the evening.