ost affectionate letter, sending messages of remembrance to Borget
and to the Commandant Carraud, and inquiring about his old
acquaintance Periollas. The Carrauds, like others in those
revolutionary days, had lost money; and Balzac explained that though
owing to his illness he had been forbidden to write, he felt obliged
to disobey his doctor's commands, that Madame Carraud should not
believe that true friends can ever fail each other in trouble. He
says: "I have never ceased thinking about you, loving you, talking of
you, even here, where they have known Borget since 1833. . . . How
different life is from the height of fifty years, and how far we are
often from our hopes! . . . How many objects, how many illusions have
been thrown overboard! and except for the affection which continues to
grow, I have advanced in nothing!"[*]

[*] "Correspondance," vol. ii. p. 422.

The annals of this last year of Balzac's life, are a record of
constantly disappointed hope and of physical suffering. One after
another he was forced to give up his many plans, and to remain in
suffering inaction. He had intended to go to Kiev to present himself
to the Governor-General, but this expedition was put off from month to
month owing to his ill health. A visit to Moscow on his way back to
Paris, was another project which had to be abandoned, as he was never
well enough to make his proposed visit to France till he took his last
painful and difficult journey in April, 1850, and sight-seeing was
then impossible. His hopefulness, however, never left him, and his
projected enterprises, whether they took the shape of writings or of
travels, were in his eyes only deferred, never definitely
relinquished. The wearing uncertainty about Madame Hanska's intentions
was the one condition of his life which continued always, if
continuance can be considered applicable to anything so variable as
that lady's moods. In April, 1849, Balzac wrote to his sister: "No one
knows what the year 1847, and February, 1848, and above all the doubt
as to what my fate will be, have cost me!"[*]

[*] "Correspondance," vol. ii. p. 392.

Sometimes, Madame Hanska, cruelly regardless of the agony she caused
the sick man by her heedless words, would threaten to break off the
engagement altogether. On other occasions, Balzac would write to his
family to say that, for reasons which he was unable to give in his
letters, the question of the marriage was _postponed indefinitely_;
and