in all my thoughts, in all
the lines that I shall trace, in all the moments of my life, in all my
being, in my hair which grows for you."[*]

[*] "Lettres a l'Etrangere."

Fortunately the long years of waiting, the anxieties, the hope
constantly deferred, the pangs of unequally matched affection, and at
last the short and imperfect fruition, were hidden from him.
Henceforward everything in his life refers to Madame Hanska, and he
waits patiently for his hoped-for union with her. His deference to his
absent friend, his fear of her disapproval, his admiration for her
perfections, are half pathetic and half comical.

Though she does not appear to have been strait-laced in her reading,
he is terribly afraid of falling in her estimation by what he writes,
and he explains anxiously that such books as "Le Medecin de Campagne"
or "Seraphita" show him in his true light, and that the "Physiologie
du Mariage" is really written in defence of women. The "Contes
Drolatiques" he is also nervous about, and he is much agitated when he
hears that she has read some of them without his permission.

He is not always _quite_ candid, and the reader of "Lettres a
l'Etrangere" may safely surmise that there is a little picturesque
exaggeration in his account of the solitary life he leads; and that
Madame Hanska had occasionally good reason for her reproaches at the
reports she heard, though Balzac always replies to these complaints
with a most touching display of injured innocence. Nevertheless, the
"Lettres a l'Etrangere" are the record of a faithful and ever-growing
love, and there is much in them which must increase the reader's
admiration for Balzac.

The year 1833 was a prosperous one with him, as in October he sold to
the publisher, Madame Charles Bechet, for 27,000 francs, an edition of
"Etudes de Moeurs au XIXieme Siecle" in twelve octavo volumes,
consisting of the third edition of "Scenes de la Vie Privee," the
first of "Scenes de la Vie de Province," and the first part of the
"Scenes de la Vie Parisienne." The last volume of this edition did not
appear till 1837, and before that time Balzac had taken further
strides towards his grand conception of the Comedie Humaine. In
October, 1834,[*] he writes to Madame Hanska that the "Etudes de
Moeurs," in which is traced thread by thread the history of the human
heart, is only to be the base of the structure; and that next, in the
"Etudes Philosophiques," he will go back from effect to c