After the publication of the Physiology and The Magic Skin, which
followed The Chouans and Scenes from Private Life, Balzac found himself
enrolled among the fashionable novelists. The public did not understand
his ideas, they were incapable of grasping the grandeur of the vast
edifice which he already dreamed of raising to his own glory, but they
enjoyed his penetrating analysis of the human heart, his understanding
of women, and his picturesque, alluring and dramatic power of
narrative. He excited the curiosity of his women readers, who
recognised themselves in his heroines as in so many faithful mirrors;
and the consequence was that he was besieged by a host of feminine
letters. Balzac had a perfumed casket in which he put away the
confidences, avowals and advances of his fair admirers, but he did not
reply to them.

In September, 1831, however, an unsigned letter arrived at the chateau
at Sache, where he had been spending his vacation; but, as he had
already left, it was forwarded to him in Paris. It was distinguished by
its refinement of tone, its cleverness and its frank and discerning
criticisms of the Physiology and The Magic Skin,--so much so, indeed,
that Balzac decided to answer its attacks upon him by defending his
works and explaining his ideas. There followed a second letter and then
others, and before long a correspondence had been established between
Balzac and the unknown lady, so fascinating on her side of it that
Balzac was eager to know her name, and demanded it, under penalty of
breaking off the whole correspondence. She willingly revealed her
identity, she was the Duchesse de Castries. She informed him further
that it would give her pleasure to have him call upon her, in the Rue
de Varennes, on the day when she received her intimate friends. Balzac,
no doubt, gave utterance to his great, joyous, triumphant laugh, in
which there was also mingled a touch of pride.