Delphine Gay; but neither seems to have exercised much influence over
him. It was different with another and more authentic duchess, Madame
de Castries, after whom he dangled for a considerable time, who
certainly first encouraged him and probably then snubbed him, and who
is thought to have been the model of his wickeder great ladies. And it
was comparatively early in the thirties that he met the woman whom,
after nearly twenty years, he was at last to marry, getting his death
in so doing, the Polish Madame Hanska. These, with some relations of
the last named, especially her daughter, and with a certain "Louise"
--an _Inconnue_ who never ceased to be so--were Balzac's chief
correspondents of the other sex, and, as far as is known, his chief
friends in it.

About his life, without extravagant "pudding" of guesswork or of mere
quotation and abstract of his letters, it would be not so much
difficult as impossible to say much; and accordingly it is a matter of
fact that most lives of Balzac, including all good ones, are rather
critical than narrative. From his real _debut_ with _Le Dernier
Chouan_ to his departure for Poland on the long visit, or brace of
visits, from which he returned finally to die, this life consisted
solely of work. One of his earliest utterances, "_Il faut piocher
ferme_," was his motto to the very last, varied only by a certain
amount of traveling. Balzac was always a considerable traveler; indeed
if he had not been so his constitution would probably have broken down
long before it actually did; and the expense of these voyagings
(though by his own account he generally conducted his affairs with the
most rigid economy), together with the interruption to his work which
they occasioned, entered no doubt for something into his money
difficulties. He would go to Baden or Vienna for a day's sight of
Madame Hanska; his Sardinian visit has been already noted; and as a