of her
as his enemy, the novelist continued to dine with her, but was ever
ready to overwhelm her with sarcasm, even while her guest. Yet, in
1843, he dedicated to her _L'Illustre Gaudissart_, a work written ten
years before.

Though he was fully recovered with time, this drama, played by a
coquette, was almost tragic for the author of the _Comedie humaine_.
No other woman left so deep a mark of passion or such rankling wounds
in his bleeding heart, as did she of whom he says:

"It has required five years of wounds for my tender nature to
detach itself from one of iron. A gracious woman, this Duchess of
whom I spoke to you, and one who had come to me under an
incognito, which, I render her this justice, she laid aside the
day I asked her to. . . . This _liaison_ which, whatever may be
said, be assured has remained by the will of the woman in the most
reproachable conditions, has been one of the great sorrows of my
life. The secret misfortunes of my situation actually come from
the fact that I sacrificed everything to her, for a single one of
her desires; she never divined anything. A wounded man must be
pardoned for fearing injuries. . . . I alone know what there is of
horror in the _Duchesse de Langeais_."

In 1831 Balzac asked for the hand of a young lady of the Faubourg
Saint-Germain, Mademoiselle Eleonore de Trumilly, second daughter of
his friend the Baron de Trumilly, Lieutenant-Colonel of the Artillery
of the Royal guard under the Restoration, a former _emigre_, and of
Madame Alexandra-Anna de Montiers. This request was received by her
father, who transmitted it to her, but she rejected the suitor and
married June 18, 1833, Francois-Felix-Claude-Marie-Marguerite Labroue,
Baron de Vareilles-Sommieres, of the diocese of Poitiers.

The Baron de Trumilly (died April 7, 1832) held high rank among the
officers of the artillery, and his cultured mind rendered him one of
the ornaments of society. He lived in friendly and intellectual
relations with Balzac while the future novelist was working on the
_Chouans_ and the _Physiologie du Mariage_, and at the time Balzac was
revising the latter for publication, he went to dine frequently at the
home of the Baron, who used to work with him until late in the
evening. In this work he introduces an old _emigre_ under the initials
of Marquis de T---- which are quite similar to those of the Baron de
Trumilly. This Marquis de T---- went to Germany about