“My celestial love, find an impenetrable place for my letters.  Oh!  I entreat you, let no harm come to you.  Let Henriette be their faithful guardian, and make her take all the precautions that the genius of woman dictates in such a case. . . .  Do not deceive yourself, my dear Eve; one does not return to Mademoiselle Henriette Borel a letter so carefully folded and sealed without looking at it.  There are clever dissimulations.  Now I entreat you, take a carriage that you may never get wet in going to the post. . . .  Go every Wednesday, because the letters posted here on Sunday arrive on Wednesday.  I will never, whatever may be the urgency, post letters for you on any day except Sunday.  Burn the envelopes.  Let Henriette scold the man at the post-office for having delivered a letter which was marked poste restante, but scold him laughing, . . .”

Balzac courteously sent greetings to Lirette in his letters to Madame Hanska, and evidently liked her.  Her religious tendencies probably impressed him many years before she took the veil, for he writes of her praying for him.

While Balzac naturally met Lirette in his visits to Madame Hanska, it was while he was at St. Petersburg in the summer of 1843 that he became more intimate with her, for she had decided to become a nun, and consulted him on many points.  Since she was to enter a convent at Paris, he visited a priest there for her, secured the necessary documents, and advised her about many matters, especially her property and the convent she should enter.  Though he aided her in every way he could, he did not approve of this step, but when she arrived in Paris, he entertained her in his home, giving up his room for her.  At various times he went with her to the convent and his housekeeper, Madame de Brugnolle, also was very kind to her.

Lirette impressed the novelist as being very stupid, and he wondered how his “Polar Star” could have ever made a friend of her.  She was as blind a Catholic as she had been a blind Protestant.  She seemed willing now to have him marry Madame Hanska, after many years of aversion to him.  He tried to impress upon her that a rich nun was much better treated than a poor one, but she would not listen to him, and insisted on making what he considered a premature donation of everything she possessed to her convent.  She annoyed him very much while he was trying to save her property, yet he was pleased to do this for the sake of his Predilecta and Anna.  He looked after her with the same solicitude that a father would have for his child, and after doing everything possible for her, he conducted her to the Convent de la Visitation without a word of thanks from her, though he had made sacrifices for her, and though his housekeeper had slept on a mattress on the floor, giving up her room in order that Lirette should have suitable quarters.  But although hurt by her ingratitude he had enjoyed talking with her, for she brought him news from his friends in Russia.