But letter-writing and delicate attentions in the form of gifts were far from satisfying him. He wanted to see her, to talk with her, to put into speech shades of feeling so delicate that the written word was powerless to reproduce them. And presently chance aided and abetted him. Mme. Hanska left Wierzchnownia for a summer vacation in Switzerland, and Balzac, on the trail of one of those business opportunities for which he was ever on the watch, was obliged to go to Besancon at precisely the same season. His mission related to the manufacture of a special kind of paper, to be made exclusively for his works, and which he imagined would speedily make his fortune. Since she was to be at Neufchatel and he at Besancon, how could they resist the pleasure of a first meeting? Permission was asked to call, and permission was granted; and Balzac, impatient and intoxicated with hope, left Paris, September 22d, arrived at Neufchatel on the 25th, and for five days enjoyed profound happiness, tender and unalloyed. They met, and the sentiments born of their correspondence, far from being destroyed by this meeting, were on the contrary exalted into trembling avowals, transports and protestations of eternal love. Balzac returned to Paris radiant with his new-found joy. He wrote as follows to his sister Laure, the habitual recipient of his confidences: "I found down yonder all that is needed to flatter the thousand vanities of that animal known as man, of which species the poet still remains the vainest variety. But why do I use the word vanity? No, that has nothing to do with it. I am happy, very happy in thought, and so far all for the best and in all honour . . . "I say nothing to you of her colossal wealth; of what consequence is that, beside a perfection of beauty which I can compare to no one except the Princess of Bellejoyeuse, only infinitely better?" Mme. Hanska was profoundly religious and a practical Catholic; and from this time onward she exerted an influence over the trend of Balzac's thoughts. Indeed, he brought back from their first interviews the germ idea of his mystical story, Seraphita. The project of the special paper having failed to materialise at Besancon, he tried to carry it out through the mediation of Mme. Carraud, but with no better success.