g
Countess to his sister and his nieces, but he was doubtless sincere,
and no record has been found of his ever having changed his opinion of
this young Russian whom he loved so tenderly.

A woman who played an important role in Balzac's association with
Madame Hanska was Mademoiselle Henriette Borel, called Lirette. She
had been governess in the home of Madame Hanska since 1824.
Sympathetic and devoted to the children, she grieved when death took
them. She helped save Anna's life, for which the entire family loved
her. It was doubtless due to her influence that M. de Hanski and his
family chose Neufchatel, her home city, as a place to sojourn. They
arrived there in the summer of 1833, and left early in October of the
same year. While at Neufchatel they were very gracious to Lirette's
relatives and Madame Hanska invited them to visit her at Geneva.

Whether Lirette wrote with her own hand the first letter sent by
Madame Hanska to Balzac--letters which de Lovenjoul says were not in
the handwriting of the _Predilecta_--we shall probably never know, but
that she knew of the secret correspondence and aided in it is seen
from the following:

"My celestial love, find an impenetrable place for my letters. Oh!
I entreat you, let no harm come to you. Let Henriette be their
faithful guardian, and make her take all the precautions that the
genius of woman dictates in such a case. . . . Do not deceive
yourself, my dear Eve; one does not return to Mademoiselle
Henriette Borel a letter so carefully folded and sealed without
looking at it. There are clever dissimulations. Now I entreat you,
take a carriage that you may never get wet in going to the post.
. . . Go every Wednesday, because the letters posted here on
Sunday arrive on Wednesday. I will never, whatever may be the
urgency, post letters for you on any day except Sunday. Burn the
envelopes. Let Henriette scold the man at the post-office for
having delivered a letter which was marked _poste restante_, but
scold him laughing, . . ."

Balzac courteously sent greetings to Lirette in his letters to Madame
Hanska, and evidently liked her. Her religious tendencies probably
impressed him many years before she took the veil, for he writes of
her praying for him.

While Balzac naturally met Lirette in his visits to Madame Hanska, it
was while he was at St. Petersburg in the summer of 1843 that he
became more intimate with her, for she had decided to