In "Un Roman d'Amour," which (as stated in the Preface to this volume) is the authority given on page 1 of "Lettres à l'Étrangère," to vouch for the authenticity of those letters, the following statement is made (page 94):—
"He [Balzac] lost in November, 1846, a daughter, born at six months. The birth of this child gave occasion for one of those great hidden dramas of which the celebrated novelist was the hero; and the rapid progress of his heart disease was due in part to this terrible adventure."
Now, a man of Balzac's emotional excitability—plainly shown in his walking distraught about Paris on reading one page of a letter without waiting to read the next (see letter to Madame Hanska of January 5, 1846)—could not have passed through such a crisis without some sign of it appearing in his letters.
I have therefore studied with great care those for the year 1846 given in his Correspondence. The letters addressed to Madame Hanska are all here, in this volume, for the reader to judge.
Balzac returned, about October 15, from Wiesbaden, where Madame Hanska, it is said, pledged herself definitively to marry him as soon as matters could be arranged with the Russian government.
From October to December there are five letters to M. and Mme. Mniszech, all very lively and gay. Here are a few quotations from them:—
October: "To-morrow our great and dear Atala [his family name for Madame Hanska] will receive a letter from me. But I charge you none the less to assure her that there is not a fibre in my heart that is not for her, and that I am, as I have been for thirteen years, the sole moujik of Paulowska, who will be hers for time and for eternity."
"Anna's dear mother is, as you know, the only affection I have in all my life. She has been my only consolation in my griefs, my toils, my misfortunes; she has sufficed to appease all, to counterbalance all."
November: "I thank you with all my heart for the punctuality with which you give me news of our great and good Atala Notify me, I entreat you, of the day when I must stop sending letters to Dresden. I imagine that the doctor will not forbid your dear, beloved mother to read. In which case I shall write to her every day. As soon as she wrote me she should stay in Dresden till the end of November I sent all the newspapers and 'La Cousine Bette' there to amuse the dear invalid."
"Père Bilboquet [his name for himself], believe it, is buying nothing more; he is only thinking of paying and worrrking [trrravailller] in the market-place of Literature; yes, I have given myself the task of earning 40,000 francs in six months. Oh! how I wish! could see my troupe in their fine carriage ... This is stolen from the quantity of copy I have to do.
"Duc De Bilboquet,
"Peer of France and other regions."
The letters to Madame Hanska of October 18, 19, 20 are unusually cheerful and hopeful about his future; and those of November 20, 21, 22, 23 are full of his work, and mention his intention to join her December 6 at Leipzig. In point of fact, he did join her in the course of that month, and she returned with him to Paris some time in January, 1847. She remained in Paris till the following April, when she returned to Wierzchownia, where Balzac followed her in September.
Now, if the reader has read the letters to Madame Hanska during this year (1846) attentively he will see, not only that there is no symptom of any such crisis with its attendant circumstances in Balzac's life, but that there was actually no time for it.