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Crisis in Balzac's private life "Contes Drolatiques" Madame Hanska's life before she met Balzac Description of her appearance "Louis Lambert" Disinterested conduct on the part of Madame de Berny Relations between Balzac and his mother Balzac and the Marquise de Castries His despair. The year 1832 was a crisis and a turning-point in the history of Balzac's private life.
Hanska here given bears the date of 1835; but we are informed in a note that he had at that moment been for some time in correspondence with her. The correspondence had begun, if we are not mistaken, on Mme. Hanska's side, before they met; she had written to him as a literary admirer. She was a Polish lady of great fortune, with an invalid husband.
Until the third volume of the Letters to the Stranger is published, it will be impossible to fill in accurately the history of the months between February and October, in which, however, events of importance occurred. One of these was Balzac's burning all Madame Hanska's epistles to him. Why? Apparently on account of a quarrel. And the quarrel?
It was during this second stay in Germany that the play of the Saltimbanques they had seen suggested to the novelist the amusing nicknames which he henceforth adopted when writing to Madame Hanska's family. Anna was dubbed Zephirine; her betrothed, Gringalet; Eve, Atala; and himself, Bilboquet.
He was now most anxious to be permanently settled, as there was no room for his art treasures in the Rue Basse; but as Madame Hanska's tastes had to be consulted as well as his own, it was necessary to be very careful in his choice. However, in October, 1846, he at last found something which he thought would be suitable.
Later on, when Anna was married, and Balzac, broken in health and tortured by his longings, was kept a slave to Madame Hanska's caprices, the hard thing may be said of her, that she was in part the cause of the death of the man she pretended to love.
At last, however, owing to the mingling of one personality with another, identification is increasingly difficult, unless the novelist comes to our assistance, as in the story Cousin Bette, where he confesses Lisbeth the old maid, to be made up out of three persons, Madame Valmore, Madame Hanska's aunt, and his own mother.
The deep thinker, the pessimistic believer in the omnipotence of vice and in the helpless suffering of virtue, who drags to light what is horrible from among the dregs of the people, seems to have nothing in common with the charming, playful figure of "le vieux Bilboquet," who gave Madame Hanska's daughter and her son-in-law a big place in his heart, and was never jealous when, avowedly for their sakes, his wishes, feelings, and health were unconsidered; whose servants, hard-worked though they were, adored him; and who never forgot his friends, or failed to help them when adversity fell upon them.
In like manner he wrote, on leaving her, that famous epigram: It is only the last love of a woman that can satisfy the first love of a man. In 1842 Mme. Hanska's husband died. Balzac naturally expected that an immediate marriage with the countess would take place; but the woman who had loved him mystically for twelve years, and with a touch of the physical for nine, suddenly draws back.
Balzac was very happy at Wierzchownia, though the fulfilment of the great desire of his life seemed still distant. Madame Hanska's hesitation continued: she considered herself indispensable to her children; besides, owing to the unfortunate state of the Chemin de Fer du Nord, Balzac's pecuniary affairs would certainly be in an embarrassed condition for the next two years.
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