h lady of great fortune, with an
invalid husband. After her husband's death, projects of marriage defined
themselves more vividly, but practical considerations kept them for a
long time in the background. Balzac had first to pay off his debts, and
Mme. Hanska, as a Polish subject of the Czar Nicholas, was not in a
position to marry from one day to another. The growth of their intimacy
is, however, amply reflected in these volumes, and the denouement
presents itself with a certain dramatic force. Balzac's letters to his
future wife, as to every one else, deal almost exclusively with his
financial situation. He discusses the details of this matter with all
his correspondents, who apparently have--or are expected to have--his
monetary entanglements at their fingers' ends. It is a constant
enumeration of novels and tales begun or delivered, revised or bargained
for. The tone is always profoundly sombre and bitter. The reader's
general impression is that of lugubrious egotism. It is the rarest thing
in the world that there is an allusion to anything but Balzac's own
affairs, and to the most sordid details of his own affairs. Hardly an
echo of the life of his time, of the world he lived in, finds its way
into his letters; there are no anecdotes, no impressions, no opinions,
no descriptions, no allusions to things heard, people seen, emotions
felt--other emotions, at least, than those of the exhausted or the
exultant worker. The reason of all this is of course very obvious. A man
could not be such a worker as Balzac and be much else besides. The note
of animal spirits which we observed in his early letters is sounded much
less frequently as time goes on; although the extraordinary robustness
and exuberance of his temperament plays richly into his books. The
"Contes Drolatiques" are full of it, and his conversation was also full
of it. But the letters constantly show us a man with the edge of his
spontaneity gone--a man groaning and sighing, as from Promethean lungs,
complaining of his tasks, denouncing his enemies, and in complete ill
humor generally with life. Of any expression of enjoyment of the world,
of the beauties of nature, art, literature, history, human character,
these pages are singularly destitute. And yet we know that such
enjoyment--instinctive, unreasoning, essential--is half the inspiration
of the poet. The truth is that Balzac was as little as possible of a
poet; he often speaks of himself as one, but he deserv