And, being false, it was odious. Madame Balzac's partiality towards
the second son--heavily enough punished--did not prevent her from
loving the elder, though their characters (hers and his) were not made
to comprehend each other; and her lack of enthusiasm in the days of
his literary apprenticeship was natural enough in a parent who
understood only too well the impractical, improvident mind he
possessed, and feared its consequences. The fact was that Balzac ill
supported remonstrances from his own family, and especially from his
mother, and, when irritated by them, forgot every benefit he had
received from her.
This peculiarity of temperament rendered his feelings toward many of
his friends exceedingly variable. One day he was lauding them to the
skies, another depreciating them to a cipher. Even his sister, Laure,
in spite of her loyalty to him, did not escape attacks from his fickle
humour. Like her mother, she never thoroughly penetrated the nature of
this wayward, excitable, compass-boxing brother of hers, whose gaze
was so much in the clouds and whose feet so often in the mire. But she
defended him to others; and, as far as her purse and her husband's
could possibly afford, she gave him money when he was hard up--and
when he was not!--money which he was never in a hurry to pay back.
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