Letters to Madame Hanska, born Countess Rzewuska, afterwards Madame Honoré de Balzac, 1833-1846. Honore de Balzac

life. My "blue devils" have no time to rise to the surface.

      Do you still intend to play Grandet at Wierzchownia? for in that case I shall await thirty invitations before going there, to save provisions. Do you want anything in Paris? I hope that you and M. Hanski will not employ any other correspondent than me. But Borget and I will arrive laden with cotignac, peach preserves, and Angoulême and Strasburg pâtés. You ought to give me a commission; you don't know what pleasure it is to me to busy myself for something a friend asks of me, how it brightens my life. A fancy—that's myself only; but the fancy of another, whom I love, is a double fancy.

      Spachmann [binder] has done your album, and I am beginning to collect the autographs. It will take long, but you shall have it, with patience. I begin with the oldest. Pigault-Lebrun is eighty-five years old; he shall begin it.

      Adieu, madame, I would like to keep on writing to you always, just as when I was by your fireside I did not want to go away. But I must bid you adieu—no, not adieu, but au revoir. I shall await with great impatience your answer, to know if you will be in Florence May 10. Do be there! The shorter the journey, the longer time I shall have to see you; I have twenty days to myself, no more. The twenty-first I must resume the yoke of misery.

      Madame de G[irardin] has made many efforts to get me back again, but your obstinate moujik—he would not be moujik if he did not say "nie"—has said nay as elegantly as he could, for he is a little civilized, your devoted moujik.[1]

      Honoré De Balzac.

      You know that all I wish to say to those about you; my regards, my respects, will have more value by passing through your lips.