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Updated: June 7, 2025
However this may be, Henriette de Mortsauf is a charming and ethereal creation, and from her we can understand the fascination Madame de Berny exerted over Balzac, and can realise that, as he says to Madame Hanska, her loss can never be made up to him. He goes on: "Ah! I implore you, do not make comparisons between yourself and Madame de Berny.
Yet since I was born, my life has been dominated by my heart a secret which I conceal with care." All this he related quite seriously to Eve. Probably, Madame de Girardin, who accompanied him on this pilgrimage, could have told Madame Hanska more.
This was impossible; and though the great obstacle to their union was now removed, Madame Hanska refused to be parted from her beloved daughter, and insisted on accompanying the newly married couple on their honeymoon.
The bond of affection between the mother and her daughter Anna was strong and enduring, and Madame Hanska would willingly have sacrificed everything for her beloved child's happiness. This was the true, engrossing love of her life; her affection for Balzac not having remained in its first freshness, as his love for her had done.
It was necessary that he should always be bright, good-natured, and agreeable to the party at Wierzchownia, and his letters to his family were therefore the only safety-valve for the impatience and despair, which, though he never utters a word of reproach against Madame Hanska, must sometimes have taken possession of him. His was a terrible dilemma.
These are very curious letters that Balzac wrote to Mme. Hanska. He literally told her everything about himself. Not only were there long passages instinct with tenderness, and with his love for her; but he also gave her the most minute account of everything that occurred, and that might interest her.
We know that he travelled, regardless of expense and exhaustion, as quickly as possible, and by the very shortest route, to meet Madame Hanska; but this once accomplished, we can gather little more, and we long for a diary or a confidential correspondent.
Les Chouans reads almost as if it were a play converted into a novel, and has been adapted successfully, and like Le Père Goriot, which someone has called the French King Lear, has been used for the stage after the time when the long-desired marriage with Madame Hanska was ended by the premature death of the author of the fine phrase, "Vierges de corps nous étions hardis en paroles."
Even the adored Madame Hanska had to take second place where work was concerned.
Madame Hanska had unfortunately decided for some time that she would in 1845 make one of those journeys which more than anything else threw Balzac and his affairs into inextricable confusion. Before M. de Hanski's death, however, Balzac was at any rate welcomed with effusion when, in his longing to see Madame Hanska, he left his affairs in Paris to take care of themselves.
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