to the
ladies he admired; and one plausible explanation of Madame de
Castries' coldness to his suit is that she did not believe in the
devotion of a lover who, while paying her the most assiduous court at
Aix, would yet write from five in the morning till half-past five in
the evening, and only bestow his company on her from six till an early
bedtime. Even the adored Madame Hanska had to take second place where
work was concerned. When they were both at Vienna in 1835, he writes
with some irritation, apparently in answer to a remonstrance on her
part, that he cannot work when he knows he has to go out; and that,
owing to the time he spent the evening before in her society, he must
now shut himself up for fourteen hours and toil at "Le Lys dans la
Vallee." He adds, with his customary force of language, that if he
does not finish the book at Vienna, he will throw himself into the
Danube!

The great psychologist knew his own character well when, in another
letter to Madame Hanska, who has complained of his frivolity, he
cries, indignantly: "Frivolity of character! Why, you speak as a good
_bourgeois_ would have done, who, seeing Napoleon turn to the right,
to the left, and on all sides to examine his field of battle, would
have said, 'This man cannot remain in one place; he has no fixed
idea!'"[*]

[*] "Lettres a l'Etrangere."

This change of posture, though consonant, as Balzac says, with real
stability, is a source of bewilderment to the reader of his sayings
and doings, till it dawns upon him that, through pride, policy, and
the usual shrinking of the sensitive from casting their pearls before
swine, Balzac was a confirmed _poseur_, so that what he tells us is
often more misleading than his silence. Leon Gozlan's books are a
striking instance of the fact that, with all Balzac's jollity, his
camaraderie, and his flow of words, he did not readily reveal himself,
except to those whom he could thoroughly trust to understand him.
Gozlan went about with Balzac very often, and was specially chosen by
him time after time as a companion; but he really knew very little of
the great man. If we compare his account of Balzac's feeling or want
of feeling at a certain crisis, and then read what is written on the
same subject to Madame Hanska, Balzac's enormous power of reserve, and
his habit of deliberately misleading those who were not admitted to
his confidence, may be gauged.

George Sand tells us an anecdote which shows how