ng no complaint of
the ungrateful beings she has met. No doubt she saw upon my face a
reflection of what I thought of her, and without explaining to
herself this little sympathy, she was charming."

Although one would not suspect Madame Hanska of being jealous of
Madame Recamier, perhaps it is because she wished to _foedorize_
herself that Balzac writes:

"_Mon Dieu!_ do not be jealous of any one. I have not been to see
Madame Recamier or any one else. . . . As to my relations with the
person you speak of, I never had any that were tender; I have none
now. I answered a very unimportant letter, and apropos of a
sentence, I explained myself; that was all. There are relations of
politeness due to women of a certain rank whom one has known; but
a visit to Madame Recamier is not, I suppose, _relations_, when
one visits her once in three months."

One of the famous women whom Balzac met soon after he began to acquire
literary fame was the Duchesse de Dino, who was married to
Talleyrand's nephew in 1809.

"When her husband's uncle became French Ambassador at Vienna in
1814, she went with him as mistress of the embassy. When he was
sent to London in 1830, she accompanied him in the same capacity.
She lived with him till his death in 1838, entirely devoted to his
welfare, and she had given us in these pages a picture of the old
Talleyrand which is among the masterpieces of memoir-writing. From
this connection she was naturally for many years in the very heart
of political affairs, as no one was, save perhaps that other
Dorothea of the Baltic, the Princess de Lieven. To great beauty
and spirit she added unusual talents, and in the best sense was a
great lady of the _haute politique_."

Balzac had met her in the salon of Madame Appony, but had never
visited her in her home until 1836, when he went to Rochecotte to see
the famous Prince de Talleyrand, having a great desire to have a view
of the "witty turkeys who plucked the eagle and made it tumble into
the ditch of the house of Austria." Several years later, on his return
from St. Petersburg, he stopped in Berlin, where he was invited to a
grand dinner at the home of the Count and Countess Bresson. He gave
his arm to the Duchesse de Talleyrand (ex-Dino), whom he thought the
most beautiful lady present, although she was fifty-two years of age.

The Duchesse has left this appreciation of the novelist: ". . . his
face and bearing a