that first meeting in Switzerland, every event in Balzac's life
had Madame Hanska in mind. The feminine intellect was an absolute
necessity to him. After a hard day's work, he eased down to earth by
writing to "The Stranger" a letter, playful, pathetic, philosophical:
just an outpouring of the heart of a tired man--letters like those Swift
wrote to Stella. He called it "resting my head in your lap."

It is quite possible that there is a little picturesque exaggeration in
these letters, and that Balzac was not quite so lonely all the time as
he was when he wrote to her. He compares her with the women he meets,
always to her advantage, of course, and in his letters he constantly
uses extracts from her letters, with phrases and peculiar words which
she had discovered for him. For instance, in one place he calls a
publisher a "rosbif ambulant," which phrase Madame Hanska had applied to
a certain Englishman she once met in Saint Petersburg.

The letters of Madame Hanska to Balzac were given to the flames by his
own hand a few years before his death, "being too sacred for the world";
but his letters to her have been preserved and published, except such
parts as were too intimate for the public to appreciate properly.

The "Droll Stories" were written and published just before Balzac met
Madame Hanska. He was much troubled as to what she would think of them,
and tried for a time to keep the book out of her hands. Finally,
however, he decided on a grandstand play. He had one of the books
sumptuously bound, and this volume he inscribed to Monsieur Hanska and
sent it with a message to the effect that it was a book for men only,
and it was written merely as a study of certain phases of human nature,
and to show the progress of the French language.

Of course, a book written for men only is bound to be read by every
woman who can place her pretty hands upon it. And so the "Droll Stories"
were carefully read by Madame, and the explanation accepted that they
were merely a study in antique French, and illustrated one chapter in
"The Human Comedy." As for Monsieur Hanska, he, being not quite so
scientific as his gifted wife, read the stories for a different reason,
and enjoyed them so much that they served him as a mine from which he
lifted his original stuff.

The conception of "The Human Comedy," or a series of books that would
run the entire gamut of human experience and picture every possible
phase of human emotion, was the id