exhibited in the _Salon_ in 1842, and presented to her by Balzac at
that time.

In answering several of Madame Hanska's questions, Balzac writes: "No,
I was not happy in writing _Beatrix_; you ought to have known it. Yes,
Sarah is Madame de Visconti; yes, Mademoiselle des Touches is George
Sand; yes, Beatrix is even too much Madame d'Agoult." A few months
later he writes: "The friendship of which I spoke to you, and at which
you laughed, apropos of the dedication, is not all I thought it.
English prejudices are terrible, they take away what is an essential
to all artists, the _laisser-aller_, unconstraint. Never have I done
so well as when, in the _Lys_, I explained the women of that country
in a few words."[*]

[*] This is probably the basis for Mr. Monahan's statement that Balzac
pictured Madame Visconti as Lady Dudley in _Le Lys dans la
Vallee_.

From the above, one would suppose that Madame Visconti is the "Sarah"
whom Balzac addresses in the dedication of _Beatrix_:

"To Sarah.

"In clear weather, on the Mediterranean shores, where formerly
extended the magnificent empire of your name, the sea sometimes
allows us to perceive beneath the mist of waters a sea-flower, one
of Nature's masterpieces; the lacework of its tissues, tinged with
purple, russet, rose, violet, or gold, the crispness of its living
filigrees, the velvet texture, all vanish as soon as curiosity
draws it forth and spreads it on the strand. Thus would the glare