"Ce que j'amais en toi, c'était mon propre reve.""

The verse above quoted illustrates to perfection a phenomenon of common occurrence among men who live largely by their brains. They very soon come to create for themselves an imaginary world, of which the hues are so intense as to take all the color out of reality. They assign themselves a part to play, and make themselves up into personages whom their most intimate friends would barely recognize; and among the dreams that possess their souls, quite the most enchanting is the dream of that ideal love, at the weaving of whose brilliant, but impalpable, tissue the poets of all time have wrought. They have seen it rising like an exhalation from the books over which they pored; they have grasped at it with long-drawn sighs, and found the thrill of its rapturous music enhanced by the irrepressible shiver of their own sensibility. This love which intoxicates the head, also penetrates a little way into the heart. It has, in the beginning, no object, but it causes the breast to swell, and the lips to tremble with burning words addressed to nobody in particular. Why should not this impassioned tenderness be expended upon some living creature? Surely the woman exists who is capable of exciting all this fervor, and shall she be invoked by so many vows and not appear? As a matter of fact, she always does appear, and that at the precise moment when she is most ardently desired. The poet recognizes her in a twinkling, and rejoices to find her so exactly like his preconceived ideal. For she is seen

Translated for the Eclectic Magazine

1 What I loved in thee was my own dream. Balzac: Lettres a l'Etrangere 1 vol. Cal

through the medium of the ideal, and saluted as the realization of the dream. These intellectual, or head loves, may be just as sincere, as profound, as durable, and as fruitful in joy and anguish as the other kind; and memorable examples of them are to be found in certain letters of Balzac and Michelet now published for the first time."

One day when Balzac and Gautier were together, the talk turned upon women; and the author of the "Comédie Humaine" remarked that the literary man ought to keep clear of them, because they waste so much of his time. Gautier protested vehemently:

"Women were made for something," he said. "You would not forbid us their society altogether, I suppose." "No," said Balzac, "but it is better to stick to writing:-that forms the style."

Balzac did not absolutely confine himself to writing, but he wrote a great deal to women. His letters to Mme. Hanska alone, during the early years of their intimacy (1833-1842) make an octavo volume of six hundred closely printed pages. We owe their publication to that admirable, I had almost said terrible, collector, M. le Vicomte Spölberch de Louvenjoul. He possesses the original correspondence entire, as well as MSS. of almost all Balzac's novels, and of several unpublished works. If Balzac dedicates a book to Mme. Hanska, M. de Louvenjoul manages to get hold of the only proof of the dedication which Balzac was obliged to withdraw. If, on the night after his marriage, Balzac has to have his house door opened by a locksmith, M. de Louvenjoul has the lockmoun Levy. Michelet: Lettres a Mlle. Mialcret. 1 vol. Flammarion.

smith's bill. Nor does this insatiate worshipper of autographs content himself with those of Balzac. He is equally well provided in the case of Saint-Beuve, of Gautier, of George Sand and many more. You may count on your fingers the great writers of the century concerning whom he does not possess original documents, which are often of a most compromising nature; and not satisfied with the joy of owning such MSS., M. de Louvenjoul undertakes to decipher and publish them. This habit renders him slightly dangerous; and yet he is not, himself, the chief sinner. The documents in question could never have come into his hands if the great writers had not had the sort of legatees who love neither to keep nor to destroy old papers, out of which profit may be made.

But what is there, beside sentimental effusions, in these six hundred pages of the "Lettres à l'Etrangère?" Nothing save the lamentations of Balzac over the burden of his daily toil, and the presence of his pecuniary difficulties, that is to say, nothing which we did not know before, nothing which is not set forth ad nauseam in the general correspondence of the novelist. He goes to bed at six o'clock, having just swallowed his dinner, gets up at midnight, drinks two cups of coffee and works twelve hours at a stretch. He writes the "Père Goriot" in forty days, and "Massamilla Dorie" in one night. He adds a volume to his "Studies in Manners," and a ten-line stanza to his "Diverting Tales." He chaffers with one bookseller and makes a contract with another, starts a newspaper, pays some of his debts and incurs new ones, for as fast as he stops one gap another opens. Love-sighs and business bothers, impassioned declarations and questions of money, engage the pen of the great writer in regular and ceaseless alternation, all through this copious and monotonous correspondence. Bal

zac loves his "Etrangère," and he is beginning a new book. He adores Mme. Hanska, and is having trouble with his publisher. He is the humble Moujik of his Russian princess, and he sketches the plan for his "Human Comedy." He thanks God for the experience of a great passion, and he sends Werdet to the devil. Love and business. One might fancy that all these literary projects and publishers' accounts, all this printing and proofreading, would so reek of ink as to disgust a woman; but not at all. The women who feel called to an epistolary intercourse with writers of fiction appear to revel in it.

On February 28th, 1832, Balzac found at his publisher Gosselin's a letter addressed to himself, signed "l'Etrangère" and postmarked at Odessa. That letter is no longer in existence. If it were so, M. de Louvenjoul would have had it, to a dead certainty. But he knows what was in it. After praising enthusiastically the "Scènes de la Vie Privée," the stranger lady reproaches Balzac with having repudiated in his "Peau de Chagrin" what had constituted the chief merit of the preceding work,namely, delicacy of feeling in delineating the finer shades of feminine character, thereby undermining the pedestal on which he had set them up in his scenes from private life. She conjured him to return to the higher sources of his

previous inspiration, renouncing those ironical and sceptical representations which tend to degrade womankind, and to deny the pure and noble rôle which is rightfully hers, provided she comprehends the mission which Heaven has charged her to fulfil upon this earth. She says the same thing, substantially, in another letter, dated a few months later: "You raise woman to her true level. Love with her is a celestial virtue, a divine emanation. I admire in you the sensibility which enables you to apprehend

An

this truth." She then becomes more personal. "Doubtless you already love the one being destined for you. angelic union should be your portion. Your soul and hers must enjoy unspeakable felicity, and the stranger loves you both." Now to be the sole confidante of a love affair is always to start a little romance of one's own, and l'Etrangère does not fail to draw her own portrait as she would like to be seen: "I am simple and candid, but timorous and shy. I am so retiring as to attract little attention. I have neither strength, energy, nor courage, save for that which concerns the one sentiment which animates my being-love! I love and I am loved! No one, as yet, has ever fully comprehended the flame that consumes me; but you-you will understand." She makes him an offer which has a two-fold attraction. shall confess to her, and she will direct him. He must indeed understand women well since he has divined the stranger. He is in the right way. If he would remain in it, he has but to fix his eyes upon the star whose mild brilliancy shines for him alone.

He

Here is quite enough to excite the imagination of Balzac. He plunges obediently into the path which has been pointed out to him. He has found the object of his dreams, and he salutes her in language adapted to her case.

"What joy to recognize you, amid the ever unhappy remnant of a dispersed people, scattered abroad over the earth, exiled it may be, from the skies, but of whom each individual has a language of his or her own, unlike that of all other human creatures. Theirs is a shrinking delicacy of soul, a chastity of sentiment, a tenderness of heart, sweeter, softer, purer, than we find in ordinary beings. These poor exiles, one and all, have in their voice, in their speech, their thought, an indescribable quality which distinguishes them from all others. Fellow-citizens of an undis

covered country, they recognize and receive one another in the name of the fatherland for which they yearn. Poetry, music and religion are the trinity of their worship."

A woman of so rare an essence is hardly of this earth, and should not be seen with the same eyes, or judged by the same standards as other women. She is an angel woman. She condescends to walk among us, but we suspect her wings. When, therefore, the Unknown shall reveal herself, Balzac will run no risk of disillusion. He finnally meets her at Neuchâtel. The worshipper is admitted to a glimpse of his idol, and he even discovers in her perfections of which he had never dreamed. "She has languid eyes; but when their gaze was concentrated upon me they beamed with voluptuous splendor. I became intoxicated with love." As a matter of fact. he was so before he saw her. He saw her afterward at long intervals: once in Geneva, once in Vienna. "You are indeed the woman whom I have longed to call mine. I go over in my mind all the delicious memories of those five and forty daysand every one is a justification of my passion." It is a peculiarity of these tremendous convictions that everything strengthens them. Exaggerated sentiment, images, metaphors, exclamations, objurgations, adjurations form the woof of Balzac's epistolary style. There are tidings feverishly awaited, palpitations aggravated by a sight of the beloved handwriting, soft reproaches, protestations of undivided affection and unwavering faith. Lovers of all ages and conditions revel in such things no less than the boy in college. Balzac puts Mme. Hanska's visiting-card under his inkstand, so as to be reminded of her every time he dips his pen. He wears, when at work, a ring which she has given him. "I put it on the forefinger of my left hand, the one with which I steady my paper, so that the

You

thought of you is ever present. are beside me, and instead of beating the air for words and ideas, I have but to demand them of my beloved ring. That ring is my 'Seraphita' in person." He sends Mme. Hanska a match which he had been chewing, as he wrote. He sends her autographs-she being an ardent collector-and the manuscripts of his novels bound in pieces of her gowns. He consults somnambulists about her, confident in the great and terrible power these people have of reading the thoughts of the absent, no matter how far away. He offers to come and take care of her, when she is ill; to place at her disposal the magnetic power he possesses of healing those who are dear to him, at any distance. His thought can reach her through space, and when the fire crackles or a pebble rolls down a bank, or a spark flies from the candle, she must understand it as a message from him. In short, no phase of the nonsense is lacking, wherein the supreme nonsense of love is wont to find expression.

It

It is easy to see what a fascination there must have been for these two lovers in a bond which united them across hundreds of leagues of distance. would seem that the great observer to whom we owe the richest of all collections of human documents was also, on one side of his nature, the most romantic of human beings.

"The fancies," he says, "the feelings, the impassioned sort of romance with which my works are concerned are far, indeed, from the fancies, the feelings, the romance which I cherish, as a man."

His personal romanticism was intensified by the fact that, as a writer, he lived a most unnatural life, secluding himself from society, overheating his imagination, treating his brain like a furnace to be incessantly worked,-a machine to be run at high pressure. Moreover, Balzac suffered from that

imperious necessity for expansion, which, when all is said, is but one of the many forms of egotism. He protests indeed that there is nothing of the egotist about him. All he needs is to bring his thoughts, his desires, his feelings to some person who is not himself. If he cannot do this he is powerless. In short, he must talk about himself. He must confess himself, as one never does, except to the woman one is in love with. Mme. Hanska, on the other hand, young, ardent, mystical and high-flown, must somehow people the solitude of that castle in the Ukraine, where she lives with a husband twentyfive years older than herself. To feel that you are occupying the mind of an acknowledged genius, who has constituted you his "literary conscience" that you are associated with a work which is being talked about all over Europe, and may go down to posterity, is a circumstance calculated to enhance that self-esteem which is so often confounded with love. You remember the Lauras and the Beatrices, and are not displeased at the notion of taking your place among these historical inamorate.

But there was one source of difference between the lovers which became more marked as time went on. Balzac would have liked to have his Muse beside him-the companion of his daily life. Mme. Hanska very much preferred inspiring him at a distance. They early exchanged vows, to whose fulfilment M. de Hanski was the only obstacle, but that obstacle could not in the nature of things be eternal one. At the time of their first meeting, in 1833, Balzac had written to his sister: "The Val de Travers is a vale of enchantment, and the lake of Bienne is simply ravishing. We sent Monsieur to see about having breakfast by the lake-side, but we remained in plain sight, though we did exchange our first kiss under one or the spread

an

ing oaks. But since our husband is close upon sixty, I have sworn to wait, and she to reserve for me her heart and hand."

Now the most ill-natured thing a husband can possibly do under such circumstances is to disappear, and this is what M. de Hanski did. Balzac hastened to claim the fulfilment of the old promise, but Mme. Hanska was in no haste to remember it. She hesitated, and asked for time. It is a serious thing to leave one's country and wholly change one's mode of life-a step not to be taken without due deliberation. The lady had a large income accruing from business enterprises, which it would never do to wind up in a hurry. And then she had her daughter to marry. And then she had er rheumatism to consider. Balzac, in his impatience, had joined her at Wierzchownia, but his health, already greatly impaired, suffered yet more from the severity of the Russian climate. He was, in fact, fatally ill. He wanted to go back to France, and he did not want to go alone. At last Mme. Hanska made up her mind, and they were married in a Russian village. Arriving in Paris by night, they found the abode which Balzac had caused to be most luxuriously fitted up, all illuminated, but on knocking at the door they received no response. The servant who was to have received them had an attack of acute mania, which seemed a rather dismal presage to the superstitious pair. Their happiness was, in fact, not as complete as their seven years of fidelity might have seemed to promise. Intimacy at first hand was less delightful than intimacy at a distance. Balzac lived only about four months, and there was no one with him at the last, but his old mother and a professional nurse. Mme. de Balzac, after she became a widow, entered into correspondence with another novelist. The habit was acquired, and the vocation was irresistible.

At about the same time that the author of "La Comédie Humaine" espoused Mme. Hanska, Jules Michelet, under the auspices of Bérenger, had married Mlle. Athenais Mialeret.

"He was supported, at the ceremony, by the College de France, in the persons of three of its professors. The College, as one may say, stood at his elbow, and was a father to him, as it is to us all."

The letters written by Michelet during the three months preceding this union, which made him happy, as all the world knows, for the last twentyfive years of his life, have lately been added in the form of a supplement to the standard edition of his works. If there be such a thing as letters unsuitable for publication these would seem to have been such.

It is not altogether wise to admit the entire public either to the privacy of one's domestic hearth, or to the preliminaries of that privacy. Moreover, Michelet's habit of addressing his ladylove now as his wife, and now as his daughter, creates an unpleasant confusion in the reader's mind. The passages in which he fails to confine the expression of his enthusiasm to the moral perfections of his fiancée might well have been omitted. The present writer has already, more than once, lifted up his voice in protest against the posthumous publication of the most intimate details. But it appears that Michelet himself desired these letters to be given to the world, and Mme. Michelet, as his editor, felt that she had no choice but to fulfil the wishes of one for whose memory she cherished a fairly religious reverence. It is probably we who are in the wrong. Our scruples are exaggerated, and we ought to regard these letters as documents to be criticized like any other text.

Michelet was a widower; his daughter was married; his son settled at a distance. The loneliness in which he