The Duchesse d’Abrantes, widow of Marechal Junot, had enjoyed under the Empire all the splendors of official life.  Her salon had been one of the most attractive of her epoch.  Being in reduced circumstances after the downfall of the Empire and having four children (Josephine, Constance, Napoleon and Alfred) to support, her life was a constant struggle to obtain a fortune and a position for her children.  But as she had no financial ability, and had acquired very extravagant habits, the money she was constantly seeking no sooner entered her hands than it vanished.  Wishing to renounce none of her former luxuries, she insisted upon keeping her salon as in former days, trying to conceal her poverty by her gaiety; but it was a sorrowful case of la misere doree.

Feeling that luxury was as indispensable to her as bread, and finding her financial embarrassment on the increase, she decided to support herself by means of her pen.  She might well have recalled the wise words of Madame de Tencin when she warned Marmontel to beware of depending on the pen, since nothing is more casual.  The man who makes shoes is sure of his pay; the man who writes a book or a play is never sure of anything.

Though the Generale Junot belonged to a society far different from Balzac’s they had many things in common which brought him frequently to her salon.  Balzac realized the necessity of frequenting the salon, saying that the first requisite of a novelist is to be well-bred; he must move in society as much as possible and converse with the aristocratic monde.  The kitchen, the green-room, can be imagined, but not the salon; it is necessary to go there in order to know how to speak and act there.

Though Balzac visited various salons, he presented a different appearance in the drawing-room of Madame d’Abrantes.  The glories of the Empire overexcited him to the point of giving to his relations with the Duchesse a vivacity akin to passion.  The first evening, he exclaimed:  “This woman has seen Napoleon as a child, she has seen him occupied with the ordinary things of life, then she has seen him develop, rise and cover the world with his name!  She is for me a saint come to sit beside me, after having lived in heaven with God!” This love of Balzac for Napoleon underwent more than one variation, but at this time he had erected in his home in the rue de Cassini a little altar surmounted by a statue of Napoleon, with this inscription:  “What he began with the sword, I shall achieve with the pen.”

When Balzac first met the Duchesse d’Abrantes, she was about forty years of age.  It is probably she whom he describes thus, under the name of Madame d’Aiglemont, in La Femme de trente Ans: