ac is flattering--a daughter's portrait of a mother--and
declares that Madame de Balzac was very severe with her children,
especially with Honore, adding that Balzac used to say that he never
heard his mother speak without experiencing a certain trembling which
deprived him of his faculties. Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, in reviewing
the _Commentaires_ of M. Fessart, notes the recurring instances in
which pity is expressed for the moral and material sufferings almost
constantly endured by Balzac in his family circle. These sufferings
seem to have impressed him more than anything else in the career of
the novelist. In speaking of Balzac's financial appeal to his family,
M. Fessart notes: "And his mother did not respond to him. She let him
die of hunger! . . . I repeat that they let him die of hunger; he told
me so several times!" When Madame Surville speaks of their keeping
Balzac's presence in Paris a secret, saying that it was moreover a
means of keeping him from all worldly temptations, M. Fessart replies:
"And of giving him nothing, and of allowing him to be in need of
everything!" Finally, when Madame Surville speaks of her parents' not
giving Balzac the fifteen hundred francs he desired, M. Fessart
confirms this, saying that his family always refused him money.

A letter from Balzac to Madame Hanska testifies to this attitude of
his family towards him: "In 1828 I was cast into this poor rue
Cassini, in consequence of a liquidation to which I had been
compelled, owing one hundred thousand francs and being without a
penny, when my family would not even give me bread."

MM. Hanotaux et Vicaire, to whose admirable work we shall have
occasion to refer often, state that Madame de Balzac advanced
thirty-seven thousand six hundred francs for Balzac on August 16, 1822,
and that his parents paid a total of forty-five thousand francs for
him.

Having read M. Fessart's description of Madame de Balzac, one can
agree with Madame Ruxton in saying that Balzac has portrayed his own
youth in his account of the early life of Raphael in _La Peau de
Chagrin_, Balzac's mother, instead of Raphael's father, being
recognized in the following passage:

"Seen from afar, my life appears to contract by some mental
process. That long, slow agony of ten years' duration can be
brought to memory to-day in some few phrases, in which pain is
resolved into a mere idea, and pleasure becomes a philosophical
reflection . . . When I left school,