[*] "Correspondance," vol. i. p. 202.
[+] "Correspondance," vol. i. p. 220.
CHAPTER VIII
1832 - 1835
Advertisement in the Quotidienne—Letters between Balzac and
Madame Hanska—His growing attachment to her—Meeting at
Neufchatel—Return to Paris—Work—"Etudes de Moeurs au XIXieme
Siecle"—"Le Medecin de Campagne"—"Eugenie Grandet"—Meets Madame
Hanska at Vienna—"La Duchesse de Langeais"—Balzac's enormous
power of work—"La Recherche de l'Absolu"—"Le Pere Goriot"
—Vienna—Monetary difficulties—Republishes romantic novels
—Continual debt—Amusements.
Meanwhile, during the tragic drama of the downfall of poor Balzac's high hopes, Madame Hanska continued to write steadily; but she was becoming tired of receiving no answer to her letters, and of not even knowing whether or no they had reached their destination. Therefore she wrote on November 7th, 1832, to ask Balzac for a little message in the Quotidienne, which she took in regularly, to say that he had received her letters; and Balzac, in reply, inserted the following notice in the Quotidienne of December 9th, 1832. "M. de B. has received the message sent him; he can only to-day give information of this through a newspaper, and regrets that he does not know where to address his answer. To. L'E.—H. de B."[*]
[*] A copy of the Quotidienne with this advertisement is in the possession of the Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, and I have seen it.
After this, it is amusing to see that Balzac was most particular in impressing on his publishers the necessity of advertising his forthcoming works in the Quotidienne, one of the few French papers allowed admission into Russia. On the other hand, the receipt of the Quotidienne with this announcement made Madame Hanska so bold, that in a letter dated January 9th, 1833, she gave Balzac the welcome information that she and M. de Hanski were leaving Ukraine for a time, and coming nearer France; and that she would indicate to him some way of corresponding with her secretly. As this is the last of her letters that can be found, we do not know what method she pointed out to Balzac; and his first letter to her is dated January, 1833, and after their meeting at Neufchatel in September, he wrote a short account of his day every evening to his beloved one, and once in eight days he despatched this journal to its destination. As he kept to this plan with only occasional interruptions whenever he was absent from her, till his marriage four months before his death, these letters, some of which are published in a volume called "Lettres a l'Etrangere," form a most valuable record of his life. In one of the first, it is interesting to see that he is obliged to soothe her uneasiness at the strange variety of his handwritings, as Madame Carraud had answered one of her letters in his name; and to allay her suspicions, he makes the rather unlikely explanation, that he has as many writings as there are days in the year. In the future, however, her letters are sacred, no eye but his own being permitted to gaze on them; and with his usual reticence where his feelings are seriously involved, he ceases to mention to his friends his correspondent in far Ukraine.
A little later he comments with joy on the fact that Madame Hanska has sent him a copy of the "Imitation of Christ,"[*] which represents our Lord on the cross, just as he is writing "Le Medecin de Campagne," which portrays the bearing of the cross by resignation, and love, faith in the future, and the spreading around of the perfume of good deeds. To Balzac, believer in the power of the transmission of thought, this coincidence was of good augury.
[*] "Lettres a l'Etrangere."