Through her narration, he was able to
enter the old Court society and watch the intrigues of the personages
who had been famous in it. Madame de Berny's mother was still living,
and added her own reminiscences to those of her daughter. Later, by
their agency he was introduced to some of the aristocratic partisans
of the fallen dynasty--the Duke de Fitz-James and the Duchess de
Castries. Under Madame de Berny's education, his Imperialism was
transformed into Legitimism.
How a matron of her age should have allowed the friendship of the
commencement to develop into a liaison is one of those problems of
sexual psychology easier to describe in Balzac's own language than to
explain rationally. We know that she was not happy with her husband,
and can surmise that she entered upon the role she played without
clearly foreseeing its dangers. No doubt, her desire to form this
genius in the rough carried her away from her moorings, which, indeed,
had never been very strong, since she had already once before in her
married life had a lover. Besides there was her temperament, sensual
and sentimental; and with it the tradition of the eighteenth-century
morals, indulgent to illicit amours.
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