“You have asked me with distrust to give an explanation of my two handwritings; but I have as many handwritings as there are days in the year, without being on that account the least in the world versatile.  This mobility comes from an imagination which can conceive all and remain vague, like glass which is soiled by none of its reflections.  The glass is in my brain.”

In this same letter, which is the second given, Balzac writes:  “. . .  I am galloping towards Poland, and rereading all your letters,—­I have but three of them, . . .”  If this last statement be true, the answer to Spoelberch de Lovenjoul’s question, “How many letters did Balzac receive thus?” is not difficult.

Miss Wormeley seems to be correct in saying that this second letter is inconsistent with the preceding one dated also in January, 1833, showing an arbitrary system of dating.  There are others which are inconsistent, if not impossible, but if Spoelberch de Lovenjoul after the death of Madame Honore de Balzac found these letters scattered about in various places, as he states, it is quite possible that contents as well as dates are confused.[*]

[*] One can see at once the injustice of the criticism of M. Henry
    Bordeaux, la Grande Revue, November, 1899, in censuring Madame
    Hanska for publishing her letters from Balzac.

The husband of Madame Hanska, M. Wenceslas de Hanski, who was never a count, but a very rich man, was many years her senior, and suffered from “blue devils” and paresis a long time before his death.  Though he was very generous with his wife in allowing her to travel, she often suffered from ennui in her beautifully furnished chateau of Wierzchownia, which Balzac described as being “as large as the Louvre.”  This was a great exaggeration, for it was comparatively small, having only about thirty rooms.  With her husband, her little daughter Anna, her daughter’s governess, Mademoiselle Henriette Borel, and two Polish relatives, Mesdemoiselles Severine and Denise Wylezynska, she led a lonely life and spent much of her time in reading, or writing letters.  The household comprised the only people of education for miles around.

Having lost six of her seven children, and being an intensely maternal woman, the deepest feelings of her heart were devoted to her daughter Anna, who also was destined to occupy much of the time and thought of the author of the Comedie humaine.

If the letters printed in Un Roman d’Amour are genuine, in the one dated January 8, 1833, she speaks of having received with delight the copy of the Quotidienne in which his notice is inserted.  She tells him that M. de Hanski with his family are coming nearer France, and she wishes to arrange some way for him to answer her letters, but he must never try to ascertain who the person is who will transmit his letters to her, and the greatest secrecy must be preserved.