But, when he met with health of mind and body,
he was as happy as a child to speak of real love and to rise into the
lofty regions of sentiment."
Unfortunately for the preceding testimony, a flat contradiction is
given to it not only by the recorded facts of the novelist's life, but
by his sister, who knew better than George Sand and Gautier that
Balzac's profession of sublimer sentiments did not exclude a more
mundane feeling and practice. Commenting on George Sand's generous
panegyric of her brother, she adds: "It is an error to speak of his
extreme moderation. He does not deserve this praise. Outside of his
work, which was first and foremost, he loved and tasted all the
pleasures of this world. I think he would have been the most conceited
of all men, if he had not been the most discreet. Confident in
himself, he never committed the least indiscretion in his relations
with others, and kept their secrets, though unable to keep his own."
The Viscount Spoelberch de Lovenjoul is still more explicit in his
short book on Balzac and Madame Hanska, entitled _Roman d'Amour_.
Speaking of the novelist's various liaisons and love escapades, which
were covered up with such solicitude from the eyes of the world, he
remarks that Balzac, while vaunting himself, in argument, of having
remained chaste for a number of years, owned to his sister that the
truth was quite different.
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