“Madame Bechet has become singularly ill-natured and will hurt my interests very much.  In paying me, she charges me with corrections which amount on the twelve volumes to three thousand francs, and also for my copies, which will cost me fifteen hundred more.  Thus four thousand five hundred francs and my discounts, diminish by six thousand the thirty-three thousand.  She could not lose a great fortune more clumsily, for Werdet estimates at five hundred thousand francs the profits to be made out of the next edition of the Etudes de Moeurs.  I find Werdet the active, intelligent, and devoted publisher that I want.  I have still six months before I can be rid of Madame Bechet; for I have three volumes to do, and it is impossible to count on less than two months to each volume.”

She evidently relented, for he wrote later that Madame Bechet had paid him the entire thirty-three thousand francs.  This, however, did not end their troubles, and he longed to be free from his obligations, and to sever all connection with her.

In the spring of 1836, Madame Bechet became Madame Jacquillart.  Whether she was influenced by her husband or had become weary of Balzac’s delays, she became firmer.  The novelist felt that she was too exacting, for he was working sixteen hours a day to complete the last two volumes for her, and he believed that the suit with which she threatened him was prompted by his enemies, who seemed to have sworn his ruin.  Madame Bechet lost but little time in carrying out her threat, for a few days after this he writes: 

“Do you know by what I have been interrupted?  By a legal notice from Bechet, who summons me to furnish her within twenty-four hours my two volumes in 8vo, with a penalty of fifty francs for every day’s delay!  I must be a great criminal and God wills that I shall expiate my crimes!  Never was such torture!  This woman has had ten volumes 8vo out of me in two years, and yet she complains at not getting twelve!”

There had been a question of a lawsuit as early as the autumn of 1835; to avoid this he was then trying to finish the Fleur-des-Pois (afterwards Le Contrat de Mariage).  But their relations were more cordial at that time, for a short time later, he writes:  “My publisher, the sublime Madame Bechet, has been foolish enough to send the corrected proofs to St. Petersburg.  I am told nothing is spoken of there but of the excellence of this new masterpiece.”

Both Madame Bechet and Werdet were in despair over Balzac’s journey to Vienna in 1835, but things grew even worse the next year.  The novelist gives this glimpse of his troubles: