"This letter contains two reproaches which have keenly affected me; and I think I have already told you that a few chance expressions would suffice to make me go to Wierzchownia, which would be a misfortune in my present perilous situation; but I would rather lose everything than lose a true friendship. . . . In short, you distrust me at a distance, just as you distrusted me near by, without any reason. I read quite despairingly the paragraph of your letter in which you do the honors of my heart to my mind, and sacrifice my whole personality to my brain. . . . In your last letters, you know, you have believed things that are irreconcilable with what you know of me. I cannot explain to myself your tendency to believe absurd calumnies. I still remember your credulity in Geneva, when they said I was married."
Even her own family added to her suspicions:
". . . Your letter has crushed me more than all the heavy nonsense that jealousy and calumny, lawsuit and money matters have cast upon me. My sensibility is a proof of friendship; there are none but those we love who can make us suffer. I am not angry with your aunt, but I am angry that a person as distinguished as you say she is should be accessible to such base and absurd calumny. But you yourself, at Geneva, when I told you I was as free as air, you believed me to be married, on the word of one of those fools whose trade it is to sell money. I began to laugh. Here, I no longer laugh, because I have the horrible privilege of being horribly calumniated. A few more controversies like the last, and I shall retire to the remotest part of Touraine, isolating myself from everything, renouncing all, . . . Think always that what I do has a reason and an object, that my actions are /necessary/. There is, for two souls that are a little above others, something mortifying in repeating to you for the tenth time not to believe in calumny. When you said to me three letters ago, that I gambled, it was just as true as my marriage at Geneva. . . . You attribute to me little defects which I do not have to give yourself the pleasure of scolding me. No one is less extravagant than I; no one is willing to live with more economy. But reflect that I work too much to busy myself with certain details, and, in short, that I had rather spend five to six thousand francs a year than marry to have order in my household; for a man who undertakes what I have undertaken either marries to have a quiet existence, or accepts the wretchedness of La Fontaine and Rousseau. For pity's sake, do not talk to me of my want of order; it is the consequence of the independence in which I live, and which I desire to keep."
In spite of these reproaches, Balzac's affection for her continued, and he decided to have his portrait made for her. Boulanger was the artist chosen, and since he wished payment at once, Madame Hanska sent the novelist a sum for this purpose. For a Christmas greeting, 1836, she sent him a copy of the Daffinger miniature made at Vienna the preceding year. Again—this time in /Illusions perdues/—he gave her name, Eve, to a young girl whom he regarded as the most charming creature he had created (Eve Chardon, who became Madame David Sechard).
In the spring of 1837 Balzac went to Italy to spend a few weeks. Seeing at Florence a bust of his /Predilecta/, made by Bartolini, he asked M. de Hanski's permission to have a copy of it, half size, made for himself, to place on his writing desk. This journey aroused Madame Hanska's suspicions again, but he assured her he was not dissipating, but was traveling to rejuvenate his broken-down brain, since, working night and day as he did, a man might easily die of overstrain.
He continued to save his manuscripts for her, awaiting an opportunity to send or take them to her. Her letters became less frequent and full of stings, but he begged her to disbelieve everything she heard of him except from himself, as she had almost a complete journal of his life. He explained that the tour he purposed making to the Mediterranean was neither for marriage nor for anything adventurous or silly, but he was pledged to secrecy, and, whether it turned out well or ill, he risked nothing but a journey. As to her reproaches how he, knowing all, penetrating and observing all, could be so duped and deceived, he wondered if she could love him if he were always so prudent that no misfortune ever happened to him.
In the spring of 1838 he took his Mediterranean trip, going to Corsica, Sardinia, and Italy in quest of his Eldorado, but, as usual, he was doomed to meet with disappointment. On his return he went to /Les Jardies/ to reside, which was later to be the cause of another financial disaster. Replying to her criticism of his journey to Sardinia, he begged her never to censure those who feel themselves sunk in deep waters and are struggling to the surface, for the rich can never comprehend the trials of the unfortunate. One must be without friends, without resources, without food, without money, to know to its depths what misfortune is.
In spite of her reproaches he continued to protest his devotion to her. Though her letters were cold, he begged her to gaze on the portrait of her /moujik/ and feel that he was the most constant, least volatile, most steadfast of men. He was willing to obey her in all things except in his affections, and she was complete mistress of those. Seized with a burning desire to see her, he planned a visit to Wierzchownia as soon as his financial circumstances would permit.
During a period of three months, Balzac received no letter from his "Polar Star," but he expressed his usual fidelity to her. Miserable or fortunate, he was always the same to her; it was because of his unchangeableness of heart that he was so painfully wounded by her neglect. Carried away, as he often was, by his torrential existence, he might miss writing to her, but he could not understand how she could deprive him of the sacred bread which restored his courage and gave him new life.
His long struggle with his debts and his various financial and domestic troubles seemed at times to deprive him of his usual hope and patience. In a depressed vein, he replies to one of her letters: