with his affections, or whether his pride was hurt by some unlucky
phrase, no one knows, but he suddenly deserted his companions and
returned to France, offering as a pretext the urgency of his literary
work. This adventure left an open wound, and it took more than five
years to cure him. He suffered cruelly, and we get an echo of his pain
in the line in the Country Doctor, "For wounded hearts, darkness and
silence." He avenged himself on Mme. de Castries by writing the Duchess
of Langeais, in which he showed how a society woman amused herself by
torturing a sensitive and sincere gentleman.



Chapter 7.

The "Foreign Lady".

After his return to Paris, Balzac threw himself into a frightful orgy
of work. It would seem as though his one desire was to forget the
coquette who had so cruelly punished him for loving her, and as though
he felt the need of atoning to himself for the hours that she had taken
him from his work. His physician, Dr. Nacquart, feared that he would
break down, and prescribed a month's rest, during which time he was
neither to read nor write, but lead a purely vegetative life. Yet, in
spite of this injunction, he found himself unable to stop working, for
he was urged on by his genius, and hounded by the terrible necessity of
meeting maturing notes, as well as by his own luxurious tastes which
must be satisfied at any cost. He had the most extravagant hopes of big
returns from The Country Doctor; and in this belief his friends
encouraged him. Emile de Girardin and Auguste Borget estimated that the
book would sell to the extent of four hundred thousand copies. It was