room will then be complete.
It's a matter of a thousand francs; but for a thousand francs what can
one get in modern furniture? _Des platitudes bourgeoises, des miseres
sans valeur et sans gout._"

Old Mme. de Balzac was her son's factotum and universal agent. His
letters from Vierzschovnia are filled with prescriptions of activity for
his mother, accompanied always with the urgent reminder that she is to
use cabs _ad libitum_. He goes into the minutest details (she was
overlooking the preparation of his house in the Rue Fortunee, which must
have been converted into a very picturesque residence): "The carpet in
the dining-room must certainly be readjusted. Try and make M. Henry send
his carpet-layer. I owe that man a good _pour-boire_; he laid all the
carpets, and I once was rough with him. You must tell him that in
September he can come and get his present. I want particularly to give
it to him myself."

His mother occasionally annoyed him by unreasonable exactions and
untimely interferences. There is an episode of a letter which she writes
to him at Vierzschovnia, and which, coming to Mme. Hanska's knowledge,
endangers his prospect of marriage. He complains bitterly to his sister
that his mother _cannot_ get it out of her head that he is still fifteen
years old. But there is something very touching in his constant
tenderness toward her--as well as something very characteristically
French--very characteristic of the French sentiment of family
consistency and solidarity--in the way in which, by constantly counting
upon her practical aptitude and zeal, he makes her a fellow worker
toward the great total of his fame and fortune. At fifty years of age,
at the climax of his distinction, announcing to her his brilliant
marriage, he signs himself _Ton fils soumis_. To his old friend Mme.
Carraud he speaks thus of this same event: "The denouement of that
great and beautiful drama of the heart which has lasted these sixteen
years.... Three days ago I married the only woman I have loved, whom I
loved more than ever, and whom I shall love until death. I believe that
this union is the recompense that God has held in reserve for me through
so many adversities, years of work, difficulties suffered and
surmounted. I had neither a happy youth nor a flowering spring; I shall
have the most brilliant summer, the sweetest of all autumns." It had
been, as Balzac says, a drama of the heart, and the denouement was of
the heart alone. Mme.