These are very curious letters that Balzac wrote to Mme. Hanska.  He literally told her everything about himself.  Not only were there long passages instinct with tenderness, and with his love for her; but he also gave her the most minute account of everything that occurred, and that might interest her.  Thus he detailed at length his mode of living, the clothes he wore, the people whom he met, his trouble with his creditors, the accounts of his income and outgo.  One might think that this was egotism on his part; but it was more than that.  It was a strong belief that everything which concerned him must concern her; and he begged her in turn to write as freely and as fully.

Mme. Hanska was not the only woman who became his friend and comrade, and to whom he often wrote.  He made many acquaintances in the fashionable world through the good offices of the Duchesse de Castries.  By her favor, he studied with his microscopic gaze the beau monde of Louis Philippe’s rather unimpressive court.

In a dozen books he scourged the court of the citizen king—­its pretensions, its commonness, and its assemblage of nouveaux riches.  Yet in it he found many friends—­Victor Hugo, the Girardins—­and among them women who were of the world.  George Sand he knew very well, and she made ardent love to him; but he laughed her off very much as the elder Dumas did.

Then there was the pretty, dainty Mme. Carraud, who read and revised his manuscripts, and who perhaps took a more intimate interest in him than did the other ladies whom he came to know so well.  Besides Mme. Hanska, he had another correspondent who signed herself “Louise,” but who never let him know her name, though she wrote him many piquant, sunny letters, which he so sadly needed.

For though Honore de Balzac was now one of the most famous writers of his time, his home was still a den of suffering.  His debts kept pressing on him, loading him down, and almost quenching hope.  He acted toward his creditors like a man of honor, and his physical strength was still that of a giant.  To Mme. Carraud he once wrote the half pathetic, half humorous plaint: 

Poor pen!  It must be diamond, not because one would wish to wear it, but because it has had so much use!

And again: 

Here I am, owing a hundred thousand francs.  And I am forty!

Balzac and Mme. Hanska met many times after that first eventful episode at Neuchatel.  It was at this time that he gave utterance to the poignant cry: 

Love for me is life, and to-day I feel it more than ever!

In like manner he wrote, on leaving her, that famous epigram: 

It is only the last love of a woman that can satisfy the first love of a man.

In 1842 Mme. Hanska’s husband died.  Balzac naturally expected that an immediate marriage with the countess would take place; but the woman who had loved him mystically for twelve years, and with a touch of the physical for nine, suddenly draws back.  She will not promise anything.  She talks of delays, owing to the legal arrangements for her children.  She seems almost a prude.  An American critic has contrasted her attitude with his: