For once, the sorcerer had predicted somewhat correctly!  Not within six weeks, to be sure, but within six months, the letter came that was to change Balzac’s entire life.  On January 5, 1842, a letter arrived from Madame Hanska, telling of the death of M. de Hanski which had occurred on November 10, 1841.

His reply is one of the most beautiful of his letters to her: 

“I have this instant received, dear angel, your letter sealed with black, and, after having read it, I could not perhaps have wished to receive any other from you, in spite of the sad things you tell me about yourself and your health.  As for me, dear, adored one, although this event enables me to attain to that which I have ardently desired for nearly ten years, I can, before you and God, do myself this justice, that I have never had in my heart anything but complete submission, and that I have not, in my most cruel moments, stained my soul with evil wishes.  No one can prevent involuntary transports.  Often I have said to myself, ’How light my life would be with her!’ No one can keep his faith, his heart, his inner being without hope. . . .  But I understand the regrets which you express to me; they seem to me natural and true, especially after the protection which has never failed you since that letter at Vienna.  I am, however, joyful to know that I can write to you with open heart to tell you all those things on which I have kept silence, and disperse the melancholy complaints you have founded on misconceptions, so difficult to explain at a distance.  I know you too well, or I think I know you too well, to doubt you for one moment; and I have often suffered, very cruelly suffered, that you have doubted me, because, since Neufchatel, you are my life.  Let me say this to you plainly, after having so often proved it to you.  The miseries of my struggle and of my terrible work would have tired out the greatest and strongest men; and often my sister has desired to put an end to them, God knows how; I always thought the remedy worse than the disease!  It is you alone who have supported me till now, . . .  You said to me, ’Be patient, you are loved as much as you love.  Do not change, for others change not.’  We have both been courageous; why, therefore, should you not be happy to-day?  Do you think it was for myself that I have been so persistent in magnifying my name?  Oh!  I am perhaps very unjust, but this injustice comes from the violence of my heart!  I would have liked two words for myself in your letter, but I sought them in vain; two words for him who, since the landscape in which you live has been before his eyes, has not passed, while working, ten minutes without looking at it; I have there sought all, ever since it came to me, that we have asked in the silence of our spirits.”

He was concerned about her health and wished to depart at once, but feared to go without her permission.  She was anxious about her letters, but he assured her that they were safe, and begged her to inform him when he could visit her; for six years he had been longing to see her.  “Adieu, my dear and beautiful life that I love so well, and to whom I can now say it. Sempre medisimo.”