[*] Concerning the climate of Kieff, the Princess Radziwill says:  “The
    story that the climate of Kieff was harmful to Balzac is also a
    legend.  In that part of Russia, the climate is almost as mild as
    is the Isle of Wight, and Balzac, when he was staying with Madame
    Hanska, was nursed as he would never have been anywhere else,
    because not only did she love him with her whole heart, but her
    daughter and the latter’s husband were also devoted to him.”

His family were suffering various misfortunes, and these, together with his deplorable condition, caused Madame Hanska to contemplate giving up an alliance with a man whose family was so unfortunate and whose social standing was so far beneath hers.  She preferred to remain in Russia where she was rich, and moved in a high aristocratic circle, rather than to give up her property and assume the life of anxiety and trials which awaited her as Madame Honore de Balzac.

At times he became most despondent; the long waiting was affecting him seriously, and he hesitated urging a life so shattered as was his upon the friend who, like a benignant star, had shone upon his path during the past sixteen years.

“If I lose all I have hoped to gain here, I should no longer live; a garret in the rue Lesdiguieres and a hundred francs a month would suffice for all I want.  My heart, my soul, my ambition, all that is within me, desires nothing, except the one object I have had in view for sixteen years.  If this immense happiness escapes me, I shall need nothing.  I will have nothing.  I care nothing for la rue Fortunee for its own sake; la rue Fortunee has only been created for her and by her.”

The novelist was cautious in his letters lest there should be gossip about his secret engagement, and his possible approaching marriage.  Apropos of his marriage, he would say that it was postponed for reasons which he could not give his family; Madame Hanska had met with financial losses again through fires and crop failures.  With his continued illness, he had many things to trouble him.

But with all his trials, Balzac remained in many ways a child.  After the terrible Moldavian fever which had endangered his life, in the fall of 1849 he took great pleasure in a dressing-gown of termolana cloth.  He had wanted one of these gowns since he first saw this cloth at Geneva in 1834.  Again he was ill, for twenty days, and his only amusement was in seeing Anna depart for dances in costumes of royal magnificence.  The Russian toilettes were wonderful, and while the women ruined their husbands with their extravagance, the men ruined the toilettes of the ladies by their roughness.  In a mazurka where the men contended for ladies’ handkerchiefs, the young Countess had one worth about five hundred francs torn in pieces, but her mother repaired the loss by giving her another twice as costly.