which concerned him must concern her; and
he begged her in turn to write as freely and as fully.

Mme. Hanska was not the only woman who became his friend and comrade,
and to whom he often wrote. He made many acquaintances in the
fashionable world through the good offices of the Duchesse de Castries.
By her favor, he studied with his microscopic gaze the beau monde of
Louis Philippe's rather unimpressive court.

In a dozen books he scourged the court of the citizen king--its
pretensions, its commonness, and its assemblage of nouveaux riches. Yet
in it he found many friends--Victor Hugo, the Girardins--and among them
women who were of the world. George Sand he knew very well, and she
made ardent love to him; but he laughed her off very much as the elder
Dumas did.

Then there was the pretty, dainty Mme. Carraud, who read and revised
his manuscripts, and who perhaps took a more intimate interest in him
than did the other ladies whom he came to know so well. Besides Mme.
Hanska, he had another correspondent who signed herself "Louise," but
who never let him know her name, though she wrote him many piquant,
sunny letters, which he so sadly needed.

For though Honore de Balzac was now one of the most famous writers of
his time, his home was still a den of suffering. His debts kept
pressing on him, loading him down, and almost quenching hope. He acted
toward his creditors like a man of honor, and his physical strength was
still that of a giant. To Mme. Carraud he once wrote the half pathetic,
half humorous plaint:

Poor pen! It must be diamond, not because one would wish to wear it,
but because it has had so much use!

And again:

Here I am, owing a hundred thousand francs. And I am forty!

Balzac and Mme. Hanska met many times after that first eventful episode
at Neuchatel. It was at this time that he gave utterance to the
poignant cry:

Love for me is life, and to-day I feel it more than ever!

In like manner he wrote, on leaving her, that famous epigram:

It is only the last love of a woman that can satisfy the first love of
a man.

In 1842 Mme. Hanska's husband died. Balzac naturally expected that an
immediate marriage with the countess would take place; but the woman
who had loved him mystically for twelve years, and with a touch of the
physical for nine, suddenly draws back. She will not promise anything.
She talks of delays, owing to the legal arrangements for her children.
She seems almost a prude. An