pages, and amongst all to whom I have presented them, I know no
heart more pure and noble than yours, in spite of those little
attacks of want of faith in me, which no doubt arises from your
great wish to find a poor author more perfect than he can
be. . . ."

In contradiction to the preceding, M. Leon Seche thinks that _Beatrix_
was dedicated to Madame Helene-Marie-Felicite Valette, and that she
is the "Madame de V-----" to whom the letter is addressed. Helene de
Valette (she probably had no right to the "nobiliary" _de_ although
she signed her name thus) was the daughter of Pierre Valette,
Lieutenant de Vaisseau, who after the death of Madame Valette, in
1818, became a priest at Vannes in order to be near their daughter
Helene, who was in the convent of the Ursulines. At the age of
eighteen he married her to a notary of Vannes, thirty years her
senior, a widower with a bad reputation, whose name was
Jean-Marie-Angele Gougeon. Scarcely had she married when she had an
intrigue with a physician; her husband died soon after this, and she
resumed her maiden name. She adopted the daughter of a _paludier_,[*]
Le Gallo, whose wife had saved her from drowning, and named her
"Marie" in memory of de Balzac's favorite name for herself.

[*] _Paludier_. One who works in the salt marshes.

In stating that the letter to "Madame de V-----" is addressed to
Madame Valette, M. Seche publishes a letter almost identical with the
one that is found in both the _Memoir and Letters of Balzac_ and the
_Correspondence, 1819-1850_, one of the chief differences being that
in this letter Balzac addresses her as "My dear Marie" instead of "My
dear friend." In telling "Madame de V-----" that he is sending her the