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Balzac, Honoré de. A Memoir of, by K. P. Wormley. Roberts Bros., Boston, 1892

His servants loved him. Rose, the cook, a true cordon bleu (we called her La Grande Nanon), used to go into despair when her master, in his working months, neglected her dainty dishes. I have seen her come into his room on tiptoe, bringing a delicious consommé, and trembling with eagerness to see him drink it. Balzac would catch sight of her; perhaps the fumes of the soup would reach his olfactories; then he would toss back his mane of hair with an impatient jerk of his head, and exclaim in his roughest and most surly voice:

"Rose, go away; I don't want anything; let me alone!"

 "But mossieu will ruin his health if he goes on in this way; mossieu will fall ill!"

 "No, no! Let me alone, I say!" in a thundering voice. "I don't want anything; you worry me; go away!"

Then the good soul would turn to go slowly, very slowly, muttering: "To take such pains to please mossieu! and such a soup—how good it smells! Why should mossieu keep me in his service if he doesn't want what I do for him?"

This was too much for Balzac. He called her back, drank the soup at a gulp and said in his kindest voice, as she went off radiant to her kitchen:

"Now, Rose, don't let this happen again!"

 When his microscopic groom, a poor little orphan whom he called Gain de mil, died, Balzac took extreme care of him, and never failed to go and see him daily during his illness.

Yes, God had given my great writer a heart of gold; and those who really knew him adored him. He possessed the art of making others love him to such a degree that in his presence they forgot any real or fancied complaint against him, and only remembered the affection they bore him .