ar star" that the above words of Quinola
may well be applied to his experience. So fervent was his adoration,
so pathetic his sufferings and so persistent his pursuit during the
seventeen long years of waiting that Miss Betham-Edwards has
appropriately said of his letters to Madame Hanska:

"Opening with a pianissimo, we soon reach _a con molto
expressione_, a _crescendo_, a _molto furore_ quickly following.
Every musical term, adjectival, substantival, occurs to us as we
read the thousand and odd pages of the two volumes. . . . Nothing
in his fiction or any other, records a love greatening as the
tedious years wore on, a love sovereignly overcoming doubt,
despair and disillusion, such a love as the great Balzac's for
_l'Etrangere_."

Their relationship from the beginning of their correspondence to the
tragic end which came so soon after Balzac had arrived "at the summit
of happiness," has been shrouded in mystery. This mystery has been
heightened by the vivid imagination of some of Balzac's biographers,
where fancy replace facts.

Miss Katherine P. Wormeley denies the authenticity of some of the
letters published in the _Lettres a l'Etrangere_, saying:

"No explanation is given of how these letters were obtained, and no
proof or assurance is offered of their authenticity. A foot-note
appended to the first letter merely states as follows: 'M. le
vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, in whose hands are the
originals of these letters, has related the history of this
correspondence in detail, under the title of _Un Roman d'Amour_
(Calmann Levy, publisher). Madame Hanska, born Evelina (Eve)
Rzewuska, who was then twenty-six or twenty-eight years old,
resided at the chateau of Wierzchownia, in Volhynia. An
enthusiastic reader of the _Scenes de la Vie privee_, uneasy at
the different turns which the mind of the author was taking in
_La Peau de Chagrin_, she addressed to Balzac--then thirty-three
years old, in the care of the publisher Gosselin, a letter signed
_l'Etrangere_, which was delivered to him February 18, 1832. Other
letters followed; that of November 7 ended thus: 'A word from you
in the _Quotidienne_ will give me the assurance that you have
received my letter, and that I can write to you without fear. Sign
it; to _l'E---- H. de B_.' This acknowledgment of reception
appeared in the _Quotidienne_ of December 9. Thus was inaugurated
the system of _petite_ corre