As his fame increased, letters arrived from various part of Europe.  Some of these were anonymous, and many were from women.  Several of the latter were answered, and early in 1832 Balzac learned that one of his unknown correspondents was the beautiful Marquise de Castries (later the Duchess de Castries).  Throwing aside her incognito, she invited him to call, and he, anxious to mingle with the exclusive society of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, gladly accepted and promptly became enraptured with her alluring charm.  It was doubtless owing to the influence of her relative, the Duc de Fitz-James, that he became active in politics at this time.

In the course of this same year (1832) there came to him an anonymous letter of great significance, dated from the distant Ukraine, and signed l’Etrangere.  Though not at that time giving him the slightest presentiment of the outcome, this letter was destined eventually to change the entire life of the novelist.  A notice in the Quotidienne acknowledging the receipt of it brought about a correspondence which in the course of events revealed to the author that the stranger’s real name was Madame Hanska.

Love affairs, however, were far from being the only things that occupied Balzac.  He was continually besieged by creditors; the clouds of his indebtedness were ever ready to burst over his head.  Meanwhile, his mother became more and more displeased with him, and impatient at his constant calls upon her for the performance of all manner of services.  She now urged him to make a rich marriage and thus put an end to his troubles and hers.  But such was not Balzac’s inclination, and he rightly considered himself the most deeply concerned in the matter.

All the while he was prodigiously productive, but the profits from his works were exceedingly small.  This fact was due to his method of composition, according to which some of his works were revised a dozen times or more, and also to the Belgian piracies, from which all popular French authors suffered.  In addition to this, his extravagant tastes developed from year to year, and thus prevented him from materially reducing his debts.

Unlike most Frenchmen, Balzac was particularly fond of travel in foreign countries, and when allured by the charms of a beautiful woman, he forgot his financial obligations and allowed nothing to prevent his responding to the call of the siren.  Thus he was enticed by the Marquise de Castries to go to Aix and from there to Geneva in 1832, and one year later he rushed to Neufchatel to meet Madame Hanska, with whom he became so enamored that a few months afterwards he spent several weeks with her at this same fatal city of Geneva where the Marquise had all but broken his heart.  In the spring of 1835 he followed a similar desire, this time going as far as the beautiful city of the blue Danube.