eye-shade, whom
I supposed to be a domestic divinity.... I am at home again; it is
half-past six in the evening, and I have eaten nothing since this
morning. Berlin is the city of _ennui_; I should die here in a week.
Poor Humboldt is dying of it; he drags with him everywhere his nostalgia
for Paris."

Balzac passed the winter of 1848-'49 and several months more at
Vierzschovnia, the Polish estate of Mme. Hanska and her children. His
health had been gravely impaired, and the doctors had absolutely
forbidden him to work. His inexhaustible and indefatigable brain had at
last succumbed to fatigue. But the prize was gained; his debts were
paid; he was looking forward to owning at last the money that he should
make. He could afford--relatively speaking at least--to rest. His fame
had been solidly built up; the public recognized his greatness. Already,
in 1846, he had written: "You will learn with pleasure, I am sure, that
there is an immense reaction in my favor. At last I have conquered! Once
more my protecting star has watched over me.... At this moment the
public and the papers turn toward me favorably; more than that, there is
a sort of acclamation, a general consecration.... It is a great year for
me, dear Countess."

To be ill and kept from work was, for Balzac, to be a chained
Prometheus; but there was much during these last months to alleviate his
impatience. His letters at this period are easier, less painfully
preoccupied than at any other; and he found in Poland better medical
advice than he deemed obtainable in Paris. He was preparing a house in
Paris to receive him as a married man--preparing it apparently with
great splendor. At Les Jardies the pictures and divans and tapestries
had mostly been nominal--had been present only in grand names, chalked
grotesquely upon the empty walls. But during the last years of his life
Balzac appears to have been a great collector. He bought many pictures
and other objects of value; in particular, there figures in these
letters a certain set of Florentine furniture which he was willing to
sell again, but to sell only to a royal purchaser. The King of Holland
appears to have been in treaty for it. Readers of the "Comedie Humaine"
have no need to be reminded of the author's passion for furniture;
nowhere else are there such loving or such invidious descriptions of it.
"Decidedly," he writes once to Mme. Hanska, "I will send to Tours for
the Louis XVI. secretary and bureau; the