, there is no doubt that she was rather alarmed at the prospect
of becoming Madame Honore de Balzac. The marriage would be decidedly a
_mesalliance_ for a Rzewuska, and her family constantly and steadily
exerted their influence to prevent her from wrecking her future. What,
they asked her, would be her life with a husband as eccentric,
extravagant, and impecunious, as they believed Balzac to be? They
collected gossip about him in Paris, and told Madame Hanska endless
stories, occasionally true, often false, and sometimes merely
exaggerated, about his oddities, his love affairs, and his general
unsuitability for alliance with an aristocratic family. It was no
doubt pleasant to have a man of genius and of worldwide fame as a
lover; but what would be her position if she took the fatal step, and
bound herself to him for life? Madame Hanska listened and paused: she
well understood her advantages as a great and moneyed lady; and she
was under no illusions as to the harassed and chequered existence
which she would lead with Balzac. She had often lent him money, his
letters kept her well informed about the state of his affairs; and the
idea of becoming wife to a man who was often forced to fly from his
creditors, must have been extremely distasteful to a woman used to
luxury and consideration. Maternal affection, love of her country,
prudence, social and worldly considerations--besides the fear of the
Czar's displeasure--were all inducements to delay; and even if she had
felt towards Balzac the passionate love for the lack of which
posterity has reproached her, it surely would have been the duty of an
affectionate mother to think of her child's welfare before her own
happiness. Later on, when Anna was married, and Balzac, broken in
health and tortured by his longings, was kept a slave to Madame
Hanska's caprices, the hard thing may be said of her, that she was in
part the cause of the death of the man she pretended to love. In 1843,
however, whatever motives incited her, her action in delaying matters
appears under the circumstances to have been right; and Balzac seems
to have felt that he had no just cause for complaint.

He wrote to Madame Hanska, at each of the stopping-places during his
tiring overland journey back to France, and describes vividly the
miserable, jolting journey through Livonia, where the carriage road
was marked out by boughs thrown down in the midst of a sandy plain,
and all around was depressing poverty a