All this time he had not forgotten Madame de Berny, or the faithless Madame de Castries; and is profoundly miserable. On January 1st, 1833, he writes to his faithful friend, Madame Carraud, to pour out his troubles, and says: "In vain I try to transfer my life to my brain; nature has given me too much heart, and in spite of everything, more than enough for ten men is left. Therefore I suffer. All the more because chance made me know happiness in all its moral extent, while depriving me of sensual beauty. She" (Madame de Berny) "gave me a true love which must finish. This is horrible! I go through troubles and tempests which no one knows of. I have no distractions. Nothing refreshes this heat, which spreads and will perhaps devour me." He then passes on to Madame de Castries, and continues: "An unheard-of coldness has succeeded gradually to what I thought was passion, in a woman who came to me rather nobly."[*] In a letter to Madame Hanska, speaking of Madame de Castries, though he does not name her, he says: "She causes me suffering, but I do not judge her. Only I think that if you loved some one, if you had drawn him every day towards you into heaven, and you were free, you would not leave him alone in the depths of an abyss of cold, after having warmed him with the fire of your soul."[+]
[*] Letters sent by the Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul to the Revue Bleue of November 21st, 1903.
[+] "Lettres a l'Etrangere."
Gradually, however, the new love gained ground; though at first Balzac showed that nervous dread of repetition of pain which was, in a man of his buoyancy and self-confidence, the last expression of depression and disillusionment. "I trembled in writing to you. I said to myself: 'Will this be only a new bitterness? Will the skies open to me again, for me only to be driven from them?'"[*] Nevertheless, passages such as the following, even taking into account the sentimental tone Balzac always adopted to his female correspondents, show that he was not destined to remain permanently inconsolable. "I love you, unknown, and this strange thing is the natural effect of an empty and unhappy life, only filled with ideas, and the misfortunes of which I have diminished by chimerical pleasures."[*]
[*] "Lettres a l'Etrangere."
In these words he gives himself the explanation of his overmastering love for Madame Hanska, a love which seems to have puzzled his contemporaries and some of his subsequent biographers. The man with the passionate nature, who cried in his youth for the satisfaction of his two immense desires—to be celebrated and to be loved—soon found the emptiness of the life of fame alone; and Madame Hanska, dowered with all that he longed for, came into his life at the psychological moment when he had broken with the old love, born into the world too soon, and had suffered bitterly at the cruel hands of the new. He turned to her with a rapture of new hope in the glories that might rise for him; and through trouble, disappointment and delay, he never once wavered in his allegiance.
In the early spring of 1833, the Hanski family, after no doubt many preparations, and surrounded by a great paraphernalia—for travelling in those days was a serious matter—started on the journey about which Madame Hanska had already told Balzac. Neufchatel was their destination; and through Mlle Henriette Borel, Anna's governess, who was a native of the place, and Madame Hanska's confidante, the Villa Andrie, in the Faubourg, just opposite the Hotel du Faubourg, was secured for them. Mlle Borel was a most useful person, as she always went to the post to claim Balzac's letters, and through Madame Hanska he sends her many directions, and specially enjoins great caution. We are told[*] that she was so much struck by the solemnities at M. de Hanski's funeral—the lights, the songs, and the national costumes —that she decided to abjure the Protestant faith, and that in 1843 she took the veil. We may wonder however, whether tardy remorse for her deceit towards the dead man, who had treated her with kindness, had not its influence in causing this sudden religious enthusiasm, and whether the Sister in the Convent of the Visitation in Paris gave herself extra penance for her sins of connivance.
[*] "Balzac a Neufchatel," by M. Bachelin.
From Neufchatel, Madame Hanska sent Balzac her exact address; and as he had really settled to go to Besancon in his search for inexpensive paper to enable him to carry out his grand scheme for an universal cheap library, it was settled that, travelling ostensibly for this purpose, he should go for a few days to Neufchatel, and meet Madame Hanska. He therefore wrote to Charles de Bernard, at Besancon, to ask him to take a place for him in the diligence to Neufchatel, on September 25th, 1833; and it is easy to imagine his qualms of anxiety, and yet joyful excitement, when he left Paris on the 22nd, and started on his fateful journey. At Neufchatel, he went to the Hotel du Faucon,[*] in the centre of the town, but found a note begging him to be on the Promenade du Faubourg next day from one to four; and he at once removed to the Hotel du Faubourg, so that he might be near the Villa Andrie. Madame Hanska no doubt shared to a certain extent his tremors of anticipation; but as a beauty and great lady she would naturally feel more confident than Balzac—especially when she had donned with care her most elegant and becoming toilette, and felt armed at every point for the encounter.
[*] "Un Roman d'Amour," by the Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, p. 75.