ing
toward the East. She decided that she must win--he should never forsake
her!

He had not tired of her, nor she of him. But she knew that when he was
forty she would be sixty: he at the height of his power and she an old
woman. They could never grow old together and go down the hill of life
hand in hand.

So Madame De Berney with splendid heroism took the initiative. She told
Balzac what was in her mind, all the time trying to be playful, as we
always do when tragedy is tugging at our hearts. Soon she would be a
drag upon him, and before that day came it was better they should
separate. He declined to listen, swore she could not break the bond; and
the scene from being playful became furious. Then it settled down,
calmed, and closed as lovers' quarrels usually do and should.

The subject came up again the next week and with a like result. Finally
Madame De Berney resorted to heroic treatment. She locked herself in her
rooms, and gave orders to the butler that Monsieur Balzac should not be
allowed to enter the house, and that to him she was not at home.

"You shall not see me grow old and totter, my body wither and fail, my
mind decline. We part now and part forever, our friendship sacred,
unsullied, and at its height. Good-by, Balzac, and good-by forever!"

Balzac was dumb with rage, then tears came to his relief, and he cried
as a child cries for its mother. The first paroxysm passed, anger took
the place of grief: he found time to realize that perhaps there were
other women besides La Dilecta--possibly there were other Dilectas. She
had struck a blow at his pride--the only blow, in fact, he ever
received.

Among Balzac's various correspondents--for successful men always get
letters from sympathetic unknowns--was one Madame Hanska, in far-off
Poland. From her letters she seemed intelligent, witty, sympathetic. He
would turn to her in his distress, to Madame Hanska--where was that last
letter from her? And did he not have her picture somewhere: let us see,
let us see!

And as for Madame De Berney: when she gave liberty to Balzac it was at
the expense of her own life. "If I could only forget, if I could only
forget!" she said. And so she lingered on for four years, and then sank
into that forgetfulness which men call death.

* * * * *

Balzac wrote of her as "Madame Hanska," and to her husband he referred
as "Monsieur Hanski," a distinction that was made by the author as
infe