In spite of her reproaches he continued to protest his devotion to her.  Though her letters were cold, he begged her to gaze on the portrait of her moujik and feel that he was the most constant, least volatile, most steadfast of men.  He was willing to obey her in all things except in his affections, and she was complete mistress of those.  Seized with a burning desire to see her, he planned a visit to Wierzchownia as soon as his financial circumstances would permit.

During a period of three months, Balzac received no letter from his “Polar Star,” but he expressed his usual fidelity to her.  Miserable or fortunate, he was always the same to her; it was because of his unchangeableness of heart that he was so painfully wounded by her neglect.  Carried away, as he often was, by his torrential existence, he might miss writing to her, but he could not understand how she could deprive him of the sacred bread which restored his courage and gave him new life.

His long struggle with his debts and his various financial and domestic troubles seemed at times to deprive him of his usual hope and patience.  In a depressed vein, he replies to one of her letters: 

“Ah!  I think you excessively small; and it shows me that you are of this world!  Ah! you write to me no longer because my letters are rare!  Well, they were rare because I did not have the money to post them, but I would not tell you that.  Yes, my distress had reached that point and beyond it.  It is horrible and sad, but it is true, as true as the Ukraine where you are.  Yes, there have been days when I proudly ate a roll of bread on the boulevard.  I have had the greatest sufferings:  self-love, pride, hope, prospects, all have been attacked.  But I shall, I hope, surmount everything.  I had not a penny, but I earned for those atrocious Lecou and Delloye seventy thousand francs in a year.  The Peytel affair cost me ten thousand francs, and people said I was paid fifty thousand!  That affair and my fall, which kept me as you know, forty days in bed, retarded my business by more than thirty thousand francs.  Oh!  I do not like your want of confidence!  You think that I have a great mind, but you will not admit that I have a great heart!  After nearly eight years, you do not know me!  My God, forgive her, for she knows not what she does!”

The novelist wrote his Predilecta of his ideas of marriage, and how he longed to marry, but he became despondent about this as well as about his debts; he felt that he was growing old, and would not live long.  His comfort while working was a picture of Wierzchownia which she had sent him, but in addition to all of his other troubles he was annoyed because some of her relatives who were in Paris carried false information to her concerning him.

Not having heard from her for six months, he resorted to his frequent method of allaying his anxiety by consulting a clairvoyant to learn if she were ill.  He was told that within six weeks he would receive a letter that would change his entire life.  Almost four more months passed, however, without his hearing from her and he feared that she was not receiving his letters, or that hers had gone astray, as he no longer had a home.