eports:

"I have here your last letter in which you speak to me of Madame
Rosalie and of _Seraphita_. Relative to your aunt, I confess that
I am ignorant by what law it is that persons so well bred can
believe such calumnies. I, a gambler! Can your aunt neither
reason, calculate nor combine anything except whist? I, who work,
even here, sixteen hours a day, how should I go to a
gambling-house that takes whole nights? It is as absurd as it is
crazy. . . . Your letter was sad; I felt it was written under the
influence of your aunt. . . . Let your aunt judge in her way of my
works, of which she knows neither the whole design nor the
bearing; it is her right. I submit to all judgements. . . . Your
aunt makes me think of a poor Christian who, entering the Sistine
chapel just as Michael-Angelo has drawn a nude figure, asks why
the popes allow such horrors in Saint Peter's. She judges a work
from at least the same range in literature without putting herself
at a distance and awaiting its end. She judges the artist without
knowing him, and by the sayings of ninnies. All that give me
little pain for myself, but much for her, if you love her. But
that you should let yourself be influenced by such errors, that
does grieve me and makes me very uneasy, for I live by my
friendships only."

In spite of this, Balzac wished to obtain the good will of "Madame
Rosalie," and sympathized with her when she lost her son. But she had
a great dislike for Paris, and after the death of M. de Hanski, she
objected to her niece's going there. The novelist felt that she was
his sworn enemy, and that she went too far in her hatred of everything
implied in the word _Paris_[*]; yet he pardoned her for the sake of
her niece.

[*] The reason why Madame Rosalie had such a horror of Paris was that
her mother was guillotined there,--the same day as Madame
Elizabeth. Madame Rosalie was only a child at that time, and was
discovered in the home of a washerwoman.

It was Caliste Rzewuska, the daughter of this aunt, whom Balzac had in
mind when he sketched _Modeste Mignon_. She was married to M.
Michele-Angelo Cajetani, Prince de Teano and Duc de Sermoneta, to whom
_Les Parents pauvres_ is dedicated.

Balzac seems to have had something of the same antipathy for Madame
Hanska's sister Caroline that he had for her aunt Rosalie, but since
he wrote to his _Predilecta_ many unfavorable things of a private
na