refreshes this heat, which spreads and will perhaps devour me." He
then passes on to Madame de Castries, and continues: "An unheard-of
coldness has succeeded gradually to what I thought was passion, in a
woman who came to me rather nobly."[*] In a letter to Madame Hanska,
speaking of Madame de Castries, though he does not name her, he says:
"She causes me suffering, but I do not judge her. Only I think that if
you loved some one, if you had drawn him every day towards you into
heaven, and you were free, you would not leave him alone in the depths
of an abyss of cold, after having warmed him with the fire of your
soul."[+]

[*] Letters sent by the Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul to the
_Revue Bleue_ of November 21st, 1903.

[+] "Lettres a l'Etrangere."

Gradually, however, the new love gained ground; though at first Balzac
showed that nervous dread of repetition of pain which was, in a man of
his buoyancy and self-confidence, the last expression of depression
and disillusionment. "I trembled in writing to you. I said to myself:
'Will this be only a new bitterness? Will the skies open to me again,
for me only to be driven from them?'"[*] Nevertheless, passages such
as the following, even taking into account the sentimental tone Balzac
always adopted to his female correspondents, show that he was not
destined to remain permanently inconsolable. "I love you, unknown, and
this strange thing is the natural effect of an empty and unhappy life,
only filled with ideas, and the misfortunes of which I have diminished
by chimerical pleasures."[*]

[*] "Lettres a l'Etrangere."