btained a letter of credit from
Rothschild, and started for Italy.

His ostensible object was a visit to Turin, to defend the Comte
Guidoboni-Visconti in a lawsuit, as the Count, whose acquaintance he
had made at the Italian Opera, could not go himself to Italy. In
reality, however, in his exhaustion, and the overstrained state of his
nerves, he craved for the freedom and distraction which he could only
find in travel. Madame Visconti was an Englishwoman--another Etrangere
--her name before her marriage had been Frances Sarah Lowell. Later
on, she became one of Balzac's closest friends, and Madame Hanska was
extremely jealous of her influence.

It is amusing to discover that Balzac did not take this journey alone.
He was accompanied by a lady whom he describes in a letter as
"charming, _spirituelle_, and virtuous," and who, never having had the
chance in her life of breathing the air of Italy, and being able to
steal twenty days from the fatigues of housekeeping, had trusted in
him for inviolable secrecy and "scipionesque" behaviour. "She knows
whom I love, and finds there the strongest safeguard."[*] This lady
was Madame Marbouty, known in literature as Claire Brunne, and during
her stay in Italy as "Marcel"--a name taken from the devoted servant
in Meyerbeer's opera "Les Huguenots," which had just appeared. A few
weeks earlier, she had refused to travel in Touraine with Balzac, as
she considered that a journey with him in France would compromise her;
but, apparently, in Italy this objection did not apply. She travelled
in man's clothes, as Balzac's page, and both he and she were
childishly delighted by the mystification they caused. Comte Sclopis,
the celebrated Piedmontese statesman, who acted as their cicerone in
Turin society, was much fascinated by the charming page. The liking
was evidently mutual, as, after the travellers had left Italy, Balzac
records that at Vevey, Lausanne, and all the places they visited,
Marcel cried: "And no Sclopis!" and it sounds as though the
exclamation had been accompanied by a sigh. Several times during the
journey the lively Amazon was mistaken for George Sand, whom she
resembled in face, as well as in the fancy for donning masculine
attire; and the mistake caused her intense satisfaction. At Geneva,
haunted to Balzac by happy memories, the travellers stayed at the
Hotel de l'Arc, and Balzac's mind was full of his lady-love, whose
spirit seemed to him to hallow the place. He saw t