"Beloved angel, be a thousand times blessed for your drop of water,
for your offer; it is everything to me and yet it is nothing. You
see what a thousand francs would be when ten thousand a month are
needed. If I could find nine, I could find twelve. But I should
have liked, in reading that delightful letter of yours, to have
plunged my hand into the sea and drawn out all its pearls to strew
them on your beautiful black hair. . . . There is a sublime scene
(to my mind, and I am rewarded for having it) in _Eugenie
Grandet_, who offers her fortune to her cousin. The cousin makes
an answer; what I said to you on that subject was more graceful.
But to mingle a single word that I have said to my Eve in what
others will read!--Ah! I would rather have flung _Eugenie Grandet_
into the fire! . . . Do not think there was the least pride, the
least false delicacy in my refusal of what you know of, the drop
of gold you have put angelically aside. . . ."

The novelist not only gave Madame Hanska the manuscript of _Eugenie
Grandet_, but had her in mind while writing it: "One must love, my
Eve, my dear one, to write the love of _Eugenie Grandet_, a pure,
immense, proud love!"

The dedication of _Eugenie Grandet_ to "Marie" did not appear until in
1839. Balzac knew several persons named "Marie." The present writer
was at one time inclined to think that this Marie might have been the
Countess Marie Potocka, whom he met while writing _Eugenie_, but her
cousin, the Princess Radziwill, says that she is sure she is not the
one he had in mind, and that she was not the type of woman to whom
Balzac would ever have dedicated a book. The novelist had dealings
with Madame Marie Dorval, and in 1839, at the time the dedication was
written, doubtless knew of her love for Jules Sandeau. Balzac knew