At various times, Balzac's relations with his mother were much estranged; at one time he did not even know where she was. When she was disappointed in her favorite child, Henri, she seemed to recognize the great wrong involved in her lack of affection for Honore and his sister Laure. But she never gave him the attentions that he longed for. In May, 1840, he wrote to Madame Hanska that he was especially sad on the day of his /fete catholique/ (May 16) as, since the death of Madame de Berny, there was no one to observe this occasion, though during her life every day was a /fete/ day; he was too busy to join with his sister Laure in the mutual observance of their birthdays, and his mother cared little for him; once the Duchesse de Castries had sent him a most beautiful bouquet,--but now there was no one. The same year (1840) he took his mother to live with him /Aux jardies/. This he regarded as an additional burden. Her continual harassing him for the money he still owed her, her nervous and discordant disposition, her constant intrigues to force him to marry, and her numerous little acts that placed him in positions beneath the dignity of an author's standing were an incessant source of annoyance to him. She did not remain with him long, but he tried to perform his filial duties and make her comfortable, as various letters show. One of these reads as follows: "My dear Mother,--It is very difficult for me to enter into the engagement you ask of me, and to do so without reflection would entail consequences most serious both for you and for myself. The money necessary for my existence is, as it were, wrung from what should go to pay my debts, and hard work it is to get it. The sort of life I lead is suitable for no one; it wears out relations and friends; all fly from my dreary house. My affairs will become more and more difficult to manage, not to say impossible. The failure of my play, as regards money, still further complicates my situation. I find it impossible to work in the midst of all the little storms raised up in a household where the members do not live in harmony. My work has become feeble during the last year, as any one can see. I am in doubt what to do. But I must come to some determination within a few days. When my furniture has been sold, and when I have disposed of 'Les Jardies,' I shall not have much left. And I shall find myself alone in the world with nothing but my pen, and an attic. In such a situation shall I be able to do more for you than I am doing at this moment? I shall have to live from hand to mouth by writing articles which I can no longer write with the agility of youth which is no more. The world, and even relations, mistake me; I am engrossed by my work, and they think I am absorbed in myself. I am not blind to the fact, that up to the present moment, working as I work, I have not succeeded in paying my debts, nor in supporting myself. No future will save me.