A visit to Sache,
after an illness, afforded him the excuse for searching; and, as he
still proposed to write--for his pleasure,--it was congruent he should
meditate a sort of Heloise and Abelard idyll--two lovers drawn to the
cloister, and telling in epistles to each other the history of their
vocation.[*]
[*] This novel was never written, or at least completed. The
_Sister Marie des Anges_, so often spoken of in the
novelist's correspondence, may have been the one here
alluded to.
As a preliminary step towards carrying his determination into
execution, he dismissed his servants, with the exception of Auguste,
finally got rid of his lease in the Rue Cassini, whence he had removed
his furniture in the preceding year; and then, feeling still a
sneaking kindness for the city in which he had triumphed, he
compromised by retreating to Sevres, there to study the ways and means
of dwelling secure from pestering military summonses addressed to
Monsieur de Balzac, _alias_ Madame Widow Brunet, Man of Letters,
Chasseur in the First Legion, and also, if not secure from, at least
not so accessible to the calls of dunning creditors. The flat in the
Rue de Chaillot, however, was retained till the year 1839; and, from
time to time, he made short stays in it.
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