. You know that I had the
proofs in Vienna, and that portrait was written at Sache and corrected
at La Bouleauniere, before I had ever seen Madame Visconti."[*]

[*] La Bouleauniere was the home of Madame de Berny, at Nemours.
Balzac visited Madame Hanska at Vienna in the spring of 1835.

Either this new friendship became too ardent for the comfort of Madame
Hanska, or she heard false reports concerning it, for she made
objections to which Balzac responds:

"Must I renounce the Italian opera, the only pleasure I have in
Paris, because I have no other seat than in a box where there is
also a charming and gracious woman? If calumny, which respects
nothing, demands it, I shall give up music also. I was in a box
among people who were an injury to me, and brought me into
disrepute. I had to go elsewhere, and, in all conscience, I did
not wish Olympe's box. But let us drop the subject."

The friendship continued to grow, however, and in December, 1836, the
novelist offered her the manuscript of _La vieille Fille_. He visited
her frequently in her home, and on his return from an extended tour to
Corsica and Sardinia in 1838 he spent some time in Milan, looking
after some business interests for the Visconti family.

When Balzac was living secluded from his creditors, Madame Visconti
showed her friendship for him in a very material way. The bailiff had
been seeking him for three weeks, when a vindictive Ariadne, having a
strong interest in seeing Balzac conducted to prison, presented
herself at the home of the creditor and informed him that the novelist
was residing in the Champs-Elysees, at the home of Madame Visconti.
Nothing could have been more exact than this information. Two hours
later, the home was surrounded, and Balzac, interrupted in the midst
of a chapter of one of his novels, saw two bailiffs enter, armed with
the traditional club; they showed him a cab waiting at the door. A
woman had betrayed him--now a woman saved him. Madame Visconti flung
ten thousand francs in the faces of the bailiffs, and showed them the
door.[*]

[*] Eugene de Mirecourt, _Les Contemporains_, does not give the date
of this incident. Keim et Lumet, _H. de Balzac_, state that it
occurred in 1837, but E. E. Saltus, _Balzac_, states that it was
in connection with the indebtedness to William Duckett, editor of
the _Dictionnaire de la Conversation_, in 1846. F. Lawton,
_Balzac_, states that it was in con