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Updated: June 10, 2025
Knothe's treatment had been followed. The younger doctor, however, soon gave up Balzac's case as hopeless; but the father, who was very intimate with the Wierzchownia family, always expressed himself confidently about his patient's ultimate recovery; and Balzac wrote: "What gratitude I owe to this doctor! Dr. Knothe's principal prescription was pure lemon juice.
When he realized that the trend of events was towards a Republic of Utopian experiment which he regarded as doomed to failure and disaster, he quietly dropped out of the struggle, and, leaving Paris once more in September, retraced his steps to Wierzchownia.
In any case, he will start for France directly after the party return to Wierzchownia in the beginning of February; and as caution is still highly important, his mother must judge from his directions about the Rue Fortunee, whether he is coming back alone, or is bringing his bride with him.
Whatever menaces of rupture between the lovers may have darkened their horizon in the spring and summer of 1847 had vanished before the autumn. At the end of September, Balzac went by invitation to Wierzchownia, and remained its guest for over four months.
After his return to Paris he had but one desire: to go back to Wierzchownia, celebrate his marriage, and realise the dream which he had tenaciously pursued for seventeen years.
It is sad that the last time we hear of this precious picture in Balzac's lifetime was when he went to Wierzchownia, in 1849; and then it had been relegated to a library which few people visited, and he describes it with his usual energy, as the most hideous daub it is possible to see quite black, from the faulty mixing of the colours; a canvas of which, for the sake of France, he is thoroughly ashamed.
It astonished him to find that the whole of the Wierzchownia castle as big as the Louvre was heated by means of straw, which was burnt in stoves, the weekly consumption being as much as could be seen in the Saint-Laurent market at Paris. But, then, everything was huge.
At last, in the spring of 1833, the fair correspondent made herself known. She was a Countess Evelina Hanska, wife of a Polish nobleman living at Wierzchownia in the Ukraine. She further allowed it to be understood that she was young, handsome, immensely rich, and not over happy with her husband. This information sufficed to set Balzac's imagination agog.
The newly-married couple travelled back to Wierzchownia, arriving, quite tired out, at half-past ten at night; and the next morning, as soon as he woke, Balzac wrote to inform his mother of the great event.
Evidently he heard that matters were not going very smoothly, as in December he wrote to Laurent-Jan from Wierzchownia to say that if the Comedie Francaise refused "Mercadet" which had been "recue a l'unanimite" on August 17th it might be offered to Frederick Lemaitre; and a few days later, hearing that the piece was "recue seulement a corrections," by the Comedie Francaise, he withdrew it altogether.
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