Lettre autographe signée après sa première rencontre avec Madame Hanska

Autograph letter signed by Honoré de Balzac, addressed to his friend, the writer Charles de Bernard. One page written in black ink on a bifolium. On the verso of the second leaf appears the address of the recipient [Charles de Bernard du Grail], written in Balzac’s hand, along with postal stamps and the seal bearing the arms of the Balzac d’Entraigues family, which the author had appropriated.

A few minor holes not affecting the text; fold marks as usual from mailing.

Published in his correspondence (Paris, Calmann Lévy, 1876, CXIV, pp. 252–253).

Balzac wrote this letter four days after his very first meeting — and first kiss — with Madame Hanska in Neuchâtel, following many months of epistolary correspondence.

« J’ai été très heureux ici. Je suis très content de ce que j’ai vu, le pays est délicieux ; mais vous savez que Jupiter a deux tonneaux et que les dieux n’ont point de faveurs qui soient pures. » ["I have been very happy here. I am most pleased with what I have seen; the country is delightful. But you know that Jupiter has two jars, and the gods grant no favours that are untainted."]

Two years after receiving the first letter from “the Stranger”, Éveline Rzewuska, a lovestruck Balzac left Paris to join her in Switzerland. His brief stop in Besançon, ostensibly a convenient detour, served as a polite pretext for his departure from the capital—where he took the opportunity to visit his correspondent, Charles de Bernard.

« Il me semble que je vous ai bien peu remercié de la bonne journée que vous m’avez donnée ; mais j’espère vous prouver que je ne suis point un ingrat. À mercredi donc ; vous devez penser que j’aurai bien du plaisir à vous revoir, vous qui avez fait que mon voyage à Besançon n’a pas été inutile et que j’y ai trouvé du plaisir ». [“I fear I thanked you all too little for the delightful day you gave me; but I hope to prove that I am not ungrateful. Until Wednesday, then — you must know how much I look forward to seeing you again, you who ensured that my journey to Besançon was not in vain, and even brought me joy.”]

After a day in Besançon and a chaotic journey by mail coach, Balzac finally met his beloved — though, regrettably, in the company of her husband, Count Hanski. Seizing upon the Count’s absence, the writer stole a long-awaited kiss with Madame Hanska on an ancient stone bench upon the hill of Crêt. In the rapture of their first encounter, he could not help but invoke La Fontaine’s ominous fable in his letter: « mais vous savez que Jupiter a deux tonneaux et que les dieux n’ont point de faveurs qui soient pures ». [“but you know that Jupiter has two jars, and the gods offer no favours untainted.”] His love affair with Madame Hanska would prove far from serene — as Gonzague Saint Bris aptly summed it up: “eighteen years of love, sixteen of waiting, two of happiness, and six months of marriage.” Neuchâtel would remain a powerful emblem of their union, recurring in some sixty of their letters. “Neuchâtel is like the white lily,” he wrote to her, “pure, with a penetrating fragrance — youth, freshness, brilliance, hope, happiness glimpsed.”

De Bernard, who had previously arranged his journey to Switzerland, was once again tasked with organising Balzac’s return: « J’aurai le plaisir de vous revoir mercredi, 2 octobre. Voulez-vous avoir l’obligeance de me retenir une place à la malle pour Paris ? ». [“I shall have the pleasure of seeing you again on Wednesday, 2 October. Would you be so kind as to reserve me a place in the mail coach to Paris?”]

The journey separating him once again from his beloved proved wretched:  “The mail coach was fully booked for six days, so my friend from Besançon [Charles de Bernard] was unable to secure me a place. I was thus obliged to travel on the roof of a diligence, in the company of five Swiss from the canton of Vaud, who treated me bodily like livestock bound for market, and whose luggage did much to contribute to my bruising.” (letter to Madame Hanska, October 6, 1833.)

In these lines, Balzac offers his very first impression of those initial moments spent with the object of his most fervent passion — the woman who would later take his name.