In answering several of Madame Hanska’s questions, Balzac writes:  “No, I was not happy in writing Beatrix; you ought to have known it.  Yes, Sarah is Madame de Visconti; yes, Mademoiselle des Touches is George Sand; yes, Beatrix is even too much Madame d’Agoult.”  A few months later he writes:  “The friendship of which I spoke to you, and at which you laughed, apropos of the dedication, is not all I thought it.  English prejudices are terrible, they take away what is an essential to all artists, the laisser-aller, unconstraint.  Never have I done so well as when, in the Lys, I explained the women of that country in a few words."[*]

[*] This is probably the basis for Mr. Monahan’s statement that Balzac
    pictured Madame Visconti as Lady Dudley in Le Lys dans la
    Vallee.

From the above, one would suppose that Madame Visconti is the “Sarah” whom Balzac addresses in the dedication of Beatrix: 

 “To Sarah.

“In clear weather, on the Mediterranean shores, where formerly extended the magnificent empire of your name, the sea sometimes allows us to perceive beneath the mist of waters a sea-flower, one of Nature’s masterpieces; the lacework of its tissues, tinged with purple, russet, rose, violet, or gold, the crispness of its living filigrees, the velvet texture, all vanish as soon as curiosity draws it forth and spreads it on the strand.  Thus would the glare of publicity offend your tender modesty; so, in dedicating this work to you, I must reserve a name which would, indeed, be its pride.  But, under the shelter of its half-concealment, your superb hands may bless it, your noble brow may bend and dream over it, your eyes, full of motherly love, may smile upon it, since you are here at once present and veiled.  Like this pearl of the ocean-garden, you will dwell on the fine, white, level sand where your beautiful life expands, hidden by a wave that is transparent only to certain friendly and reticent eyes.  I would gladly have laid at your feet a work in harmony with your perfections; but as that was impossible, I knew, for my consolation, that I was gratifying one of your instincts by offering you something to protect.

“DE BALZAC."[*]

[*] S. de Lovenjoul, Histoire des Oeuvres de Balzac, states that the
    “Sarah” to whom Balzac dedicated Beatrix is no other than an
    Englishwoman, Frances Sarah Lowell, who became the Comtesse Emile
    Guidoboni-Visconti.  She was born at Hilks, September 29, 1804, and
    died at Versailles April 28, 1883.

In sending the corrected proofs of Beatrix to “Madame de V——­,” Balzac writes: