two letters that he alleged to be from her, dated in 1832 and 1833?

The Princess Radziwill who is the niece of Madame Honore de Balzac and
was reared by her in the house of Balzac in the rue Fortunee, has been
both gracious and generous to the present writer in giving her much
valuable information that could not have been obtained elsewhere. In
answer to the above question, she states:

"Balzac said that he burned my aunt's letters in order to reassure
her one day when she had reasons to fear they would fall into
other hands than those to whom they belonged. After his death, my
aunt found them all, and I am sorry to say that _it was she who
burned them_, and that I was present at this _autodafe_, and
remember to this day my horror and indignation. But my aunt as
well as my father had a horror of leaving letters after them, and
strange to say, they were right in fearing to leave them because
in both cases, papers had a fate they would not have liked them to
have."

The sketch of the family of Madame Honore de Balzac as given in _Un
Roman d'Amour_, is so inaccurate that the Princess Radziwill has very
kindly made the following corrections of it for the present writer:

"(1) Madame Hanska was really born on December _24th, not 25th_,
1801. You will find the date on her grave which is under the same
monument as that of Balzac, in Pere Lachaise in Paris. I am
absolutely sure of the day, because my father was also born on
Christmas Eve, and there were always great family rejoicings on
that occasion. You know that the Roman Catholic church celebrates
on the 24th of December the fete of Adam and Eve, and it is
because they were born on that day that my father and his sister
were called Adam and Eve. I am also quite sure that the year of my
aunt's birth was 1801, and my father's 1803, and should be very
much surprised if my memory served me false in that respect. But I
repeat it, the exact dates are inscribed on my aunt's grave. . . .
I looked up since I saw you a prayer book which I possess in which
the dates of birth are consigned, and thus found 1801, and I think
it is the correct one, but at all events I repeat it once more,
the exact date is engraved on her monument.

"(2) Caroline Rzewuska, my aunt's eldest sister, and the eldest of
the whole family, is the Madame Cherkowitsch of Balzac's letters,
and not Shikoff, as the family sketch says. It is equally
ridic