c. And on this point the
historians and critics are all agreed.

Madame De Berney was a gentle, intelligent, sympathetic and pathetic
figure. She was no idle woman, warm on the eternal quest. She was a
home-body intent on caring for her household.

Her husband was many years her senior, and at the time Balzac appeared
upon the scene, De Berney, had he been consistent, would have passed
off; but he did not, for paralytics are like threatened people--good
life-insurance risks.

A woman of forty-two is not old--bless my soul! I'll leave it to any
woman of that age.

And Balzac at twenty was as old as he was at forty-two: a little more so
perhaps, for as the years passed he grew less dogmatic and confident. At
twenty we are likely to have full faith in our own infallibility.

Madame De Berney was the daughter of a musician in the court of Marie
Antoinette. In fact, the queen had stood as her godmother and she had
grown up surrounded by material luxury and a mental wilderness, for be
it known that members of royal households, like the families of
millionaires, are likely to be densely ignorant, being hedged in,
shielded, sheltered and protected from the actual world that educates
and evolves.

Madame De Berney had been married at the age of sixteen by the busy
matchmakers, and her life was one of plain marital serfdom. Her material
wants were supplied, but economic freedom had not been hers, for she was
supposed to account to her husband for every sou. Marriage is often
actual slavery, and it was such for Madame De Berney, until De Berney
got on pretty good terms with locomotor ataxia and placed his foot on
one spot when he meant to put it on another.

Portraits of Madame De Berney show her to be tall, slender, winsome,
with sloping shoulders, beautiful neck, and black, melancholy curls
drooping over her temples, making one think of Elizabeth Barrett
Browning. In the presence of such a woman, one would naturally lower his
voice. Half-mourning was to her most becoming. Madame De Berney was
receptive and sympathetic and had gotten a goodly insight into
literature. She had positive likes and dislikes in an art way. There
were a few books she had read and reread until they had become a part of
her being. At forty-two a woman is either a drudge, a fool or a saint.
Intellect shines out and glows then if it ever does. From forty to sixty
should be a woman's mental harvest-time. Youth and youth's ambitions and
desires are i