“There is still a Metternich in this adventure; but this time it is the son, who died in Florence.  I have already told you of this cruel affair, and I had no right to tell you.  Though separated from that person out of delicacy, all is not over yet.  I suffer through her; but I do not judge her. . . .  Madame de C——­ insists that she has never loved any one except M. de M——­ and that she loves him still, that Artemisia of Ephesus. . . .  You asked me, I believe, about Madame de C——­ She has taken the thing, as I told you, tragically, and now distrusts the M——­ family.  Beneath all this, on both sides there is something inexplicable, and I have no desire to look for the key of mysteries which do not concern me.  I am with Madame de C——­ on the proper terms of politeness, and as you yourself would wish me to be.”

After their abrupt separation at Geneva, their relations continued to be estranged: 

“For the moment I will tell you that Madame de C——­ has written me that we are not to see each other again; she has taken offense at a letter, and I at many other things.  Be assured that there is no love in all this! . . .  I meant to speak to you of Madame de C——­, but I have not the time.  Twenty-five days hence I will tell you by word of mouth.  In two words, your Honore, my Eva, grew angry at the coldness which simulated friendship.  I said what I thought; the reply was that I ought not to see again a woman to whom I could say such cruel things.  I asked a thousand pardons for the ‘great liberty,’ and we continue on a very cold footing.”

Balzac was deeply wounded through his passionate love for Madame de Castries, and resented her leaving him in the depths of an abyss of coldness after having inflamed him with the fire of her soul; he began to think of revenge: 

“I abhor Madame de C——­, for she blighted my life without giving me another,—­I do not say a comparable one, but without giving me what she promised.  There is not the shadow of wounded vanity, oh! but disgust and contempt . . .  If Madame de C——­’s letter displeases you, say so frankly, my love.  I will write to her that my affections are placed in a heart too jealous for me to be permitted to correspond with a woman who has her reputation for beauty, for charm, and that I act frankly in telling her so. . . .”

Indeed, his experience with Madame de Castries at Geneva had made him so unhappy that on his return to that city to visit his Predilecta, he had moments of joy mingled with sorrow, as the scenery recalled how, on his previous visit, he had wept over his illusions perdues.  While other writers suggest different causes, one might surmise that this serious disappointment was the beginning of Balzac’s heart trouble, for in speaking of it, he says:  “It is necessary for my life to be bright and pleasant.  The cruelties of the woman whom you know have been the cause of the trouble; then the disasters of 1848. . . .”