of these two things took place. Balzac "n'y pensait deja plus." He
talked with the greatest eagerness of the embellishments he had
proposed to M. Decazes for his palace, and especially of a grand
spiral staircase, which was to lead from the centre of the Luxembourg
Gardens to the Catacombs, so that these might be shown to visitors,
and become a source of profit to Paris. But of his play he said
nothing.

The reader of "Lettres a l'Etrangere," which are written to the woman
with whom Balzac was passionately in love, and whom he afterwards
married, may, perhaps, at first sight congratulate himself on at last
understanding in some degree the great author's character and mode of
life. If he dives beneath the surface, however, he will find that
these beautiful and touching letters give but an incomplete picture;
and that, while writing them, Balzac was throwing much energy into
schemes, which he either does not mention to his correspondent, or
touches on in the most cursory fashion. Therefore the perspective of
his life is difficult to arrange, and ordinary rules for gauging
character are at fault. We find it impossible to follow the principle,
that because Balzac possessed one characteristic, he could not also
show a diametrically opposite quality--that, for instance, because
tenderness, delicacy of feeling, and a high sense of reverence and of
honour were undoubtedly integral parts of his personality, the stories
told by his contemporaries of his occasional coarseness must
necessarily be false.

His own words, written to the Duchesse d'Abrantes in 1828, have no
doubt a great element of truth in them: "I have the most singular
character I know. I study myself as I might study another person, and
I possess, shut up in my five foot eight inches, all the incoherences,