confirms what you say of them.  Your story of General H——­ comes up periodically.  There has been something like it in all countries, but I thank you for having told it to me.  The circumstances give it novelty."[*]

[*] This is only one of the numerous allusions Balzac made to the
    analytical forehead of Madame Hanska.

Though Balzac’s letters to Madame Hanska became less effervescent as time went on, each year seemed to add to his admiration and “dog-like fidelity.”  She, on the other hand, complained of his dissipation, the society he kept, and his short letters.

While Balzac was in Vienna, he was working on Le Lys dans la Vallee.  Although he said that Madame de Mortsauf was Madame de Berny, M. Adam Rzewuski, a brother of Madame Hanska, always felt that this character represented his sister, and called attention to the same intense maternal feeling of the two women, and the same sickly, morose husband.  The Princess Radziwill also believes that this is a portrait of her aunt, which hypothesis is further strengthened by comments of Emile Faguet, who says that to one who has read Balzac’s letters in 1834-1835 closely, it is clear that Madame de Mortsauf is Madame Hanska, and that the marvelous M. de Mortsauf is M. de Hanski.

Mr. F. Lawton also thinks that Balzac has shown his relations to Madame Hanska in making Felix de Vandenesse console himself with Lady Dudley while swearing high allegiance to his Henriette, just as Balzac was “inditing oaths of fidelity to his ‘earth-angel’ in far-away Russia while worshipping at shrines more accessible.  Lady Dudley may well have been, for all his denial, the Countess Visconti, of whom Madame Hanska was jealous and on good grounds, or else the Duchesse de Castries, to whom he said that while writing the book he had caught himself shedding tears.”  Balzac says of this book: 

“I have received five formal complaints from persons about me, who say that I have unveiled their private lives.  I have very curious letters on this subject.  It appears that there are as many Messieurs de Mortsauf as there are angels at Clochegourde, and angels rain down upon me, but they are not white.”

In the early autumn of 1835, M. de Hanski and his family, having spent several weeks at Ischl, returned to their home at Wierzchownia after an absence of more than two years.  It was during this long stay at Vienna that Madame Hanska had Daffinger make the miniature which occupies so much space in Balzac’s letters in later years.

It must have been a relief to poor Balzac when his Chatelaine returned to her home, for while traveling she was negligent about giving him her address, so that he was never sure whether she received all his letters, and she did not number hers, as he had asked her to do, so that he was not certain that he received all that she wrote him; neither would she—­though leading a life of leisure—­write as often