adame de V-----" to whom the letter is addressed. Helene de
Valette (she probably had no right to the "nobiliary" _de_ although
she signed her name thus) was the daughter of Pierre Valette,
Lieutenant de Vaisseau, who after the death of Madame Valette, in
1818, became a priest at Vannes in order to be near their daughter
Helene, who was in the convent of the Ursulines. At the age of
eighteen he married her to a notary of Vannes, thirty years her
senior, a widower with a bad reputation, whose name was
Jean-Marie-Angele Gougeon. Scarcely had she married when she had an
intrigue with a physician; her husband died soon after this, and she
resumed her maiden name. She adopted the daughter of a _paludier_,[*]
Le Gallo, whose wife had saved her from drowning, and named her
"Marie" in memory of de Balzac's favorite name for herself.

[*] _Paludier_. One who works in the salt marshes.

In stating that the letter to "Madame de V-----" is addressed to
Madame Valette, M. Seche publishes a letter almost identical with the
one that is found in both the _Memoir and Letters of Balzac_ and the
_Correspondence, 1819-1850_, one of the chief differences being that
in this letter Balzac addresses her as "My dear Marie" instead of "My
dear friend." In telling "Madame de V-----" that he is sending her the
proofs of _Beatrix_, Balzac refers to the suppression of his play
_Vautrin_, and says that the director _des beaux-arts_ has come a
second time to offer him an indemnity which _ne faisait pas votre
somme_. This might lead one to think that he had had some financial
dealings with her.

In the dedication of _Beatrix_, dated _Aux Jardies_, December, 1838,
Balzac speaks of Sarah's being a pearl of the Mediterranean. In the
Island of Malta is a town called Cite-Vallette--suggestive of the name
Felicite Valette. Felicite is also the name of the heroine, Felicite
des Touches, although Marie is the name of Madame Valette that Balzac
liked best.

In 1836, after reading some of Balzac's novels, Madame de Valette
wrote to Balzac. Attracted by her, he went to Guerande where he took
his meals at a little hotel kept by the demoiselles Bouniol, mentioned
in _Beatrix_. Under her guidance he roamed over the country and then
wrote _Beatrix_. She pretended to him to have been born at Guerande
and to have been reared as a _paludiere_ by her godmother, Madame de
Lamoignon-Lavalette, whence the reference in the dedication to the
former "empire of your name."