In these words he gives himself the explanation of his overmastering
love for Madame Hanska, a love which seems to have puzzled his
contemporaries and some of his subsequent biographers. The man with
the passionate nature, who cried in his youth for the satisfaction of
his two immense desires--to be celebrated and to be loved--soon found
the emptiness of the life of fame alone; and Madame Hanska, dowered
with all that he longed for, came into his life at the psychological
moment when he had broken with the old love, born into the world too
soon, and had suffered bitterly at the cruel hands of the new. He
turned to her with a rapture of new hope in the glories that might
rise for him; and through trouble, disappointment and delay, he never
once wavered in his allegiance.

In the early spring of 1833, the Hanski family, after no doubt many
preparations, and surrounded by a great paraphernalia--for travelling
in those days was a serious matter--started on the journey about which
Madame Hanska had already told Balzac. Neufchatel was their
destination; and through Mlle Henriette Borel, Anna's governess, who
was a native of the place, and Madame Hanska's confidante, the Villa
Andrie, in the Faubourg, just opposite the Hotel du Faubourg, was
secured for them. Mlle Borel was a most useful person, as she always
went to the post to claim Balzac's letters, and through Madame Hanska
he sends her many directions, and specially enjoins great caution. We
are told[*] that she was so much struck by the solemnities at M. de
Hanski's funeral--the lights, the songs, and the national costumes
--that she decided to abjure the Protestant faith, and that in 1843
she took the veil. We may wonder however, whether tardy remorse for
her deceit towards the dead man, who had treated her with kindness,
had not its influence in causing this sudden religious enthusiasm,