ea of Madame Hanska. In the year
Eighteen Hundred Thirty-two she had written him: "No writer who has ever
lived has possessed so wide a sympathy as you. Some picture courts and
kings; others reveal to us beggars, peasants and those who struggle for
bread; still others give charming views of children; while all men and
women in love write love-stories; but you know every possible condition
that can come to a human soul, and so you seem the only person who ever
has written or could write the complete 'Human Comedy' in which every
type of man, woman or child who ever lived shall have his part."

No wonder Balzac loved Madame Hanska--what writer would not love a woman
who could place him on such a pedestal! Every writer has moments when he
doubts his power, and so this assurance from Some One seems a necessity
to one who is to do a great and sustained work. Balzac, he of the
child-mind, needed the constant assurance that he was going forward in
the right direction.

Balzac seized upon the phrase, "The Human Comedy," just as he seized
upon anything which he could weave into the fabric he was constructing.
And so finally came his formal announcement that he was to write the
entire life of man, and picture every possible aspect of humanity, in a
hundred books to be known as "La Comedie Humaine." It was a conception
as great and daring as the plan of Pliny to write out all human
knowledge, or the ambition of Newton as shown in the "Principia," or the
works of Baron von Humboldt as revealed in the "Cosmos," or the idea of
Herbert Spencer as bodied forth in the "Synthetic Philosophy."

* * * * *

All the time Balzac was looking forward to when he and Madame Hanska
would next meet, or back to the meeting that had just taken place. Each
year, for a few short, sweet days, they met in Switzerland or at some
appointed place in Italy or France. Sometimes Monsieur Hanska was there
and sometimes not. That worthy gentleman always seemed to feel a certain
gratification in the thought that his wife was so attractive to the
great author of the "Droll Stories," the only Balzac book he had really
ever read.

That he did not even guess their true relation is very probable; he knew
that his wife was something of a writer, and he was satisfied when he
was told that she was helping Balzac in his literary undertakings. That
he was not compelled to read the joint production, and pass judgment on
it, gave him so mu