t her first at Neuchatel, and found her all that he had imagined.
It is said that she had no sooner raised her face, and looked him fully
in the eyes, than she fell fainting to the floor, overcome by her
emotion. Balzac himself was deeply moved. From that day until their
final meeting he wrote to her daily.

The woman who had become his second soul was not beautiful.
Nevertheless, her face was intensely spiritual, and there was a mystic
quality about it which made a strong appeal to Balzac's innermost
nature. Those who saw him in Paris knocking about the streets at night
with his boon companions, hobnobbing with the elder Dumas, or rejecting
the frank advances of George Sand, would never have dreamed of this
mysticism.

Balzac was heavy and broad of figure. His face was suggestive only of
what was sensuous and sensual. At the same time, those few who looked
into his heart and mind found there many a sign of the fine inner
strain which purified the grosser elements of his nature. He who wrote
the roaring Rabelaisian Contes Drolatiques was likewise the author of
Seraphita.

This mysticism showed itself in many things that Balzac did. One little
incident will perhaps be sufficiently characteristic of many others. He
had a belief that names had a sort of esoteric appropriateness. So, in
selecting them for his novels, he gathered them with infinite pains
from many sources, and then weighed them anxiously in the balance. A
writer on the subject of names and their significance has given the
following account of this trait:

The great novelist once spent an entire day tramping about in the
remotest quarters of Paris in search of a fitting name for a character
just conceived by him. Every sign-board, every door-plate, every
affiche upon the walls, was scrutinized. Thousands of names were
considered and rejected, and it was only after his companion, utterly
worn out by fatigue, had flatly refused to drag his weary limbs through
more than one additional street, that Balzac suddenly saw upon a sign
the name "Marcas," and gave a shout of joy at having finally secured
what he was seeking.

Marcas it was, from that moment; and Balzac gradually evolved a
Christian name for him. First he considered what initial was most
appropriate; and then, having decided upon Z, he went on to expand this
into Zepherin, explaining minutely just why the whole name Zepherin
Marcas, was the only possible one for the character in the novel.

In ma