Yet
her, too, he maligned to "The Stranger," because she now and again
ventured on expostulations.
Madame Balzac made two stays in the Passy cottage, neither of them
very long. After leaving the first time, she asked her son to pay her
a somewhat larger sum per month, which would allow her to live
decently elsewhere. Considering that he had borrowed from her a couple
of thousand pounds--over fifty thousand francs--and that the sum he
had paid her irregularly was not five per cent interest on the money,
this request was not unreasonable. Yet he refused to accede to it on
the ground of being in financial straits; and offered her a home with
him once more, but in language that spoke of strained relations
between them, as well as of a personal discouragement that was real.
"The life I lead," he wrote, "suits no one; it wearies relatives and
friends alike. All leave my melancholy home. . . . It is impossible
for me to work amidst the petty tiffs aroused by surroundings of
discord; and my activity has waned during the past year. . . . You
were in a tolerable situation. I had a trustworthy person who spared
you all household worries. You were not obliged to trouble about
domestic matters; you were in peace and silence.
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