had always longed since his early youth, and of which a sudden freak
of fortune so unexpectedly had opened him the doors. In that sense he
was the _parvenu_ his enemies have accused him of being, and he often
showed himself narrow minded, until at last his wife's influence made
him consider, without the disdain he had affected for them before,
people who were not of noble birth or of exalted rank. On the other
hand, Madame de Balzac, thanks to her husband's Catholic and
Legitimistic tendencies and sympathies, became less sarcastic than had
been the case when she had, perhaps more than she ought, noticed the
smallnesses and meannesses of the particular set of people who at that
period constituted the cream of European society. They both came to
acquire a wider view of the world in general, thanks to their
different ways of looking at it, and this of course turned to their
great mutual advantage.

I will not extend myself here on the help my aunt was to Balzac all
through the years which preceded their marriage, when there seemed no
possibility of the marriage ever taking place. She encouraged him in
his work, interested herself in all his actions, praised him for all
his efforts, tried to be for him the guide and the star to which he
could look in his moments of dark discouragement, as well as in his
hours of triumph. Without her affection to console him, he would most
probably have broken down under the load of immense difficulties which
constantly burdened him, and he never would have been able to leave
behind him as a legacy to a world that had never property appreciated
or understood him, those volumes of the _Comedie humaine_ which have
made his name immortal. Madame Hanska was his good genius all through
those long and dreadful years during which he struggled with such
indomitable courage against an adverse fate, and her devotion to him
certainly deserved the words which he wrote to her one day, "I love