M---- family. Beneath all
this, on both sides there is something inexplicable, and I have no
desire to look for the key of mysteries which do not concern me. I
am with Madame de C---- on the proper terms of politeness, and as
you yourself would wish me to be."

After their abrupt separation at Geneva, their relations continued to
be estranged:

"For the moment I will tell you that Madame de C---- has written me
that we are not to see each other again; she has taken offense at
a letter, and I at many other things. Be assured that there is no
love in all this! . . . I meant to speak to you of Madame de
C----, but I have not the time. Twenty-five days hence I will tell
you by word of mouth. In two words, your Honore, my Eva, grew
angry at the coldness which simulated friendship. I said what I
thought; the reply was that I ought not to see again a woman to
whom I could say such cruel things. I asked a thousand pardons for
the 'great liberty,' and we continue on a very cold footing."

Balzac was deeply wounded through his passionate love for Madame de
Castries, and resented her leaving him in the depths of an abyss of
coldness after having inflamed him with the fire of her soul; he began
to think of revenge:

"I abhor Madame de C----, for she blighted my life without giving
me another,--I do not say a comparable one, but without giving me
what she promised. There is not the shadow of wounded vanity, oh!
but disgust and contempt . . . If Madame de C----'s letter
displeases you, say so frankly, my love. I will write to her that
my affections are placed in a heart too jealous for me to be
permitted to correspond with a woman who has her reputation for
beauty, for charm, and that I act frankly in telling her
so. . . ."

Indeed, his experience with Madame de Castries at Geneva had made him
so unhappy that on his return to that city to visit his _Predilecta_,
he had moments of joy mingled with sorrow, as the scenery recalled
how, on his previous visit, he had wept over his _illusions perdues_.
While other writers suggest different causes, one might surmise that
this serious disappointment was the beginning of Balzac's heart
trouble, for in speaking of it, he says: "It is necessary for my life
to be bright and pleasant. The cruelties of the woman whom you know
have been the cause of the trouble; then the disasters of 1848. . . ."

He tried to overcome his dejection by intense wor