"Oh! Monsieur de Balzac!"
But in such a lamentable accent that I was struck by it. Then she turned to my sister, who was laughing heartily, and said:—
"Well, then, between you and me, madame."
My sister told me afterwards that this mask was neither well dressed nor well shod.
There's my adventure, the sole and only one I shall probably ever have at a masked ball; for I have never before gone to one, and, doubtless, shall never go to another. I do not see what good they are. If two people love each other, the ball is useless. If they go in search of what are called bonnes fortunes I think them very bad, and I ask myself if it isn't rather Jeroslas, that is to say, Jesuitical (this between ourselves), to satisfy, under a mask, a passion we will not own.
If I can leave on the first days of March, the sovereign of Paulowska will have had letters enough from me to let her know it. God grant that for one month more I may not be ill or ill-inspired! I shall make my preparations joyously. Be kind enough to write me a line in answer to the following: I should like, in order to go quickly and without care, to have no luggage. If I clear in the custom-house here for Vienna, to the address of Baron Sina, my personal effects, books, manuscripts, etc., will they be opened in Vienna without my presence? Will they get there without being opened on the way? Can I, without fear, put in all the things I want for my own use? And finally, how many days does it take for packages to go from Paris to Vienna? I would like to travel without stopping, and have only my own person to fling from one carriage to another till I get there.
Adieu; forty days are almost nothing to me now, and I tell myself that forty days hence I shall be in the mail-cart for Strasburg. I shall see Vienna, the Danube, the fields of Wagram, the island of Lobau; I don't say anything about the Landstrasse. As a faithful moujik I know nothing that is grander than those who inhabit it.
Do you still go into society? But of us two, the one who is busiest and the least rich in time is the one who writes oftenest. I growl, like a poor neglected dog, but to whom it suffices to say, "Here, Milord!" to make him happy.
Paris, February 10, 1835.
Though I have scarcely time to write, I cannot be silent about the pleasure I felt yesterday at a fête given by Madame Appony, when Prince Esterhazy, having asked to see me, began to talk of a certain Madame Hanska, née Rzewuska, whose mind, graces, and knowledge had astonished him, and who had given him the desire to see me. With what joy I said before seven or eight women, who all have pretensions, that I had never met in my life but two women who could match you for learning without pedantry, womanly charm, and lofty sentiments—I will not tell you all I said; I should seem to be begging a favourable glance from the sovereign of Paulowska. But all the women made faces, especially when the prince agreed with me about your beauty, and told how everybody knew that your wit did not make you spiteful, for you were graciously kind. I could have hugged that good little prince!