After their marriage, the homeward journey was delayed several weeks.
The baggage, which was to be conveyed by wagon, only left April 2, and
it required about two weeks for it to reach Radziwiloff, owing to the
general thaw just set in. Then Balzac had a severe relapse due to lung
trouble, and it was twelve days before he recovered sufficiently to
travel. He had an attack of ophthalmia at Kieff, and could scarcely
see; the Countess Anna fell ill with the measles, and her mother would
not leave until the Countess recovered. They started late in April for
what proved to be a terrible journey, he suffering from heart trouble,
and she from rheumatism. On the way they stopped for a few days at
Dresden, where Balzac became very ill again. His eyes were in such a
condition that he could no longer see the letters he wrote. The
following was written from Dresden, gives a glimpse of their troubles:

"We have taken a whole month to go a distance usually done in six
days. Not once, but a hundred times a day, our lives have been in
danger. We have often been obliged to have fifteen or sixteen men,
with levers, to get us out of the bottomless mudholes into which
we have sunk up to the carriage-doors. . . . At last, we are here,
alive, but ill and tired. Such a journey ages one ten years, for
you can imagine what it is to fear killing each other, or to be
killed the one by the other, loving each other as we do. My wife
feels grateful for all you say about her, but her hands do not
permit her to write. . . ."

Madame de Balzac has been most severely criticized for her lack of
affection for Balzac, and their married life has generally been
conceded to have been very unhappy. This supposition seems to have
been based largely on hearsay. Miss Sandars quotes from a letter
written to her daughter on May 16 from Frankfort, in which, speaking
of Balzac as "poor dear friend," she seems to be quite ignorant of his
condition, and to show more interest in her necklace than in her
husband. The present writer has not seen this _unpublished_ letter;
but a _published_ letter dated a few days before the other, in which
she not only refers to Balzac as her husband but shows both her
affection for him and her interest in his condition, runs as follows:

"Hotel de Russie (Dresden). My husband has just returned; he has
attended to all his affairs with a remarkable activity, and we are
leaving to-day. I did not realize what an ado