 Her life inspired Honoré de Balzac's most famous novel "Eugénie Grandet" (1833), which depicted in part her family, who were living at the time in the French city of Sartrouville.In 1833, as he revealed in a letter to his sister, Honoré de Balzac entered into a secret intrigue, with Marie (aka "Maria") du Fresnay, who was then 24.Her marriage to Charles Antoine Du Fresnay, son of Charles Du Fresnay, former mayor of Sartrouville (portrayed as "Charles Grandet, nephew of the former mayor of Saumur" in Eugénie Grandet) had been a failure from the start, with a 23-year age difference between them.