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Balzac's mother certainly had a hard life, and from what we hear of her nervous, excitable nature inherited apparently from her mother, Madame Sallambier we can hardly be astonished when Balzac writes to Madame Hanska, in 1835, that if her misfortunes do not kill her, it is feared they will destroy her reason.
He adds, with his customary force of language, that if he does not finish the book at Vienna, he will throw himself into the Danube! The great psychologist knew his own character well when, in another letter to Madame Hanska, who has complained of his frivolity, he cries, indignantly: "Frivolity of character!
Le Medecin de Campagne was an early book; it was published in 1833, a date of which there is an interesting mark in the selection of the name "Evelina," the name of Madame Hanska, whom Balzac had just met, for the lost Jansenist love of Benassis; and it had been on the stocks for a considerable time.
The case is the same with me and Madame Hanska. The gift of her affection accounts to me for all my troubles, my worries, and my terrible labours. I have been paying in advance for the price of this treasure: as Napoleon says, everything is paid for here, nothing is stolen. I seem, indeed, to have paid very little.
Balzac writes to Madame Hanska: "The papers will have told you about the Duchesse d'Abrantes' deplorable death. She ended as the Empire ended. Another of Balzac's friendships, rather different in character from those already mentioned, was that with George Sand, "his brother George" he used to call her.
Disappointed in the object for which he left home, it furnished him with leisure to gather fresh subjects for his pen, and even to begin one the Diaries of Two Young Wives. What he wished to describe in this book was stated in the following remarks to Madame Hanska: "I have never seen a novel in which happy love, satisfied love, is depicted.
This is anticipation; we must return to the end of September, 1848, when Balzac, after having arranged the necessary business matters, hurried back to Madame Hanska. For the better guardianship of his treasures, he left his mother with two servants installed in the Rue Fortunee, and he expected to return to Paris by the beginning of 1849.
Somewhat encouraged by vague inquiries from Madame Hanska as to the income required by a household for living in Paris, he entered into particulars with gusto; and, stating that he had eighty thousand francs worth of furniture, he discussed the best manner of arranging an existence with eight hundred thousand francs capital.
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.
"You must be proud of your children," he writes to his sister from Poland; "such daughters are the recompense of your life. You must not be unjust to destiny; you may now accept many misfortunes. It is like myself with Mme. Hanska. The gift of her affection explains all my troubles, my weariness, and my toil; I was paying to evil, in advance, the price of such a treasure.
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