alzac and bore him a child.

This liaison was running its ephemeral course just at the time when
accident made him acquainted with his future wife. On the 28th of
February 1832, his publisher Gosselin handed him a letter with a
foreign postmark. His correspondent, a lady, who had read, she said,
and admired his _Scenes of Private Life_, reproached him with losing,
in the _Shagreen Skin_, the delicacy of sentiment contained in these
earlier novels, and begged him to forsake his ironic, sceptical manner
and revert to the higher manifestations of his talent. There was no
signature to this communication; and the writer, who subscribed
herself "The Stranger," begged him to abstain from any attempt to
discover who she was, as there were paramount reasons why she should
remain anonymous. Balzac's curiosity was keenly aroused by so much
mystery, and he tried, but in vain, to get hold of some clue that
might conduct him to the retreat of the _incognita_. After a lapse of
seven months, a second epistle arrived, more romantic in tone than the
first; and containing, among obscure allusions to the lady's
surroundings and personality, the following declaration: "You no doubt
love and are loved; the union of angels must be your lot. Your souls
must have unknown felicities. The Stranger loves you both, and desires
to be your friend. . . . She likewise knows how to love, but that is
all. . . . Ah! you understand me."

A third letter followed this one shortly afterwards, asking the
novelist to acknowledge its receipt in the _Quotidienne_ journal,
which he did, expressing in the advertisement his regret at not being
able to address a direct reply. At last, in the spring of 1833, the
fair correspondent made herself known. She was a Countess Evelina
Hanska, wife of a Polish nobleman living at Wierzchownia in the
Ukraine. She further allowed it to be understood that she was young,
handsome, immensely rich, and not over happy with her husband. This
information sufficed to set Balzac's imagination agog. At once, he
enshrined the dame in the temple of his ideal, poured out his heart to
her, and told her of his struggles and ambitions, meanwhile fashioning
a realm of the future in which he and she were to be the two reigning
monarchs.

Madame Hanska was also a Pole. She belonged to the noble Rzewuska
stock and was born in the castle of Pohrebyszcze between 1804 and
1806. Owing to family reverses, her parents, who had several other
children t