like Balzac must have been of
absorbing interest to a woman of great delicacy of feeling, and
evidently considerable literary powers, whose surroundings were
uncongenial; and his warm and enduring affection helped her to tide
over many of the troubles of a sad life.

Recent researches have discovered several interesting facts about the
origin of the woman to whom may be ascribed the merit of "creating"
the writer who was destined to exercise so great an influence on his
own and succeeding generations.[*] Curiously enough, Louise Antoinette
Laure Hinner, destined at the age of fifteen years and ten months to
become Madame de Berny, was, like Madame Hanska, a foreigner, being
the daughter of Joseph Hinner, a German musician, who was brought by
Turgot to France. Here he became harpist to Marie Antoinette, and
married Madame Quelpee de Laborde, one of the Queen's ladies in
waiting. Two years later, on May 23rd, 1777, the future Madame de
Berny came into the world, and made her debut with a great flourish of
trumpets, Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, represented by the Duc de
Fronsac and Laure Auguste de Fitz-James, Princesse de Chimay, being
her god-parents. When in 1784 her father died, her mother married the
Chevalier de Jarjayes, one of Marie Antoinette's most loyal adherents
during the Revolution. It was he who conceived the project of carrying
off Louis XVII. from the Temple, and who was entrusted with the
precious duty of carrying the seal, ring, and hair belonging to the
Royal Family to the exiled Monsieur and Comte d'Artois.[*]

[*] See "Balzac, Imprimeur," in "La Jeunesse de Balzac," by MM.
Hanotaux et Vicaire.

We can easily see whence Balzac derived his strong Royalist principles
--how from boyhood the lessons taught him by his masters, M. Lepitre
and M. Guillonnet de Merville, would be insisted on, only with much
greater effect and insistence, by this charming woman of the world.
Her mother, still living, had passed her time in the disturbed and
exciting atmosphere of plots and counterplots; and she herself could
tell him story after story of heartrending tragedies and of
hairbreadth escapes, which had happened to her own relations and
friends. From her he acquired those aristocratic longings which always
characterised him, and through her influence he made acquaintance with
several people of high position and importance, and thus was enabled
to make an occasional appearance in the _beau-monde_ of Paris.