knowing whether or no they had reached their destination. Therefore
she wrote on November 7th, 1832, to ask Balzac for a little message in
the _Quotidienne_, which she took in regularly, to say that he had
received her letters; and Balzac, in reply, inserted the following
notice in the _Quotidienne_ of December 9th, 1832. "M. de B. has
received the message sent him; he can only to-day give information of
this through a newspaper, and regrets that he does not know where to
address his answer. To. L'E.--H. de B."[*]

[*] A copy of the _Quotidienne_ with this advertisement is in the
possession of the Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, and I have
seen it.

After this, it is amusing to see that Balzac was most particular in
impressing on his publishers the necessity of advertising his
forthcoming works in the _Quotidienne_, one of the few French papers
allowed admission into Russia. On the other hand, the receipt of the
_Quotidienne_ with this announcement made Madame Hanska so bold, that
in a letter dated January 9th, 1833, she gave Balzac the welcome
information that she and M. de Hanski were leaving Ukraine for a time,
and coming nearer France; and that she would indicate to him some way
of corresponding with her secretly. As this is the last of her letters
that can be found, we do not know what method she pointed out to
Balzac; and his first letter to her is dated January, 1833, and after
their meeting at Neufchatel in September, he wrote a short account of
his day every evening to his beloved one, and once in eight days he
despatched this journal to its destination. As he kept to this plan
with only occasional interruptions whenever he was absent from her,
till his marriage four months before his death, these letters, some of
which are published in a volume called "Lettres a l'Etrangere," form a