Sometimes, Madame Hanska, cruelly regardless of the agony she caused the sick man by her heedless words, would threaten to break off the engagement altogether. On other occasions, Balzac would write to his family to say that, for reasons which he was unable to give in his letters, the question of the marriage was _postponed indefinitely_; and once he made the resolution that he would not leave Wierzchownia till the affair was settled in one way or another. In a crisis of his terrible malady he wrote: "Whatever happens, I shall come back in August. One must die at one's post. . . . How can I offer a life as broken as mine! I must make my situation clear to the incomparable friend who for sixteen years has shone on my life like a beneficent star."[*] [*] "Correspondance," vol. ii. p. 401. The relations between Balzac and Madame Hanska at this time are mysterious. He shows his usual caution in his letters to his family, and the reader is conscious that much was passing at Wierzchownia, on which Balzac is absolutely silent, and that many events that he _does_ record are carefully arranged with the intention of conveying certain impressions to his hearers. One of his motives is clear. He was nervously afraid that gossip about his secret engagement, and possibly approaching marriage, should be spread abroad prematurely; and that the report might either frighten Madame Hanska into dismissing him altogether, or might reach the ears of her relations, and cause them to remonstrate with her anew on the folly of her proceedings. Other discrepancies are puzzling. All through 1849 Balzac, as we have seen, was very ill. He was suffering from aneurism of the heart, a complaint which the two doctors Knothe told him they could cure. With perfect faith in their powers, Balzac wrote to his sister expressing regret that, owing to the ignorance of the French doctors Soulie had been allowed to die of this malady, when he might have been saved if Dr. Knothe's treatment had been followed. The younger doctor, however, soon gave up Balzac's case as hopeless; but the father, who was very intimate with the Wierzchownia family, always expressed himself confidently about his patient's ultimate recovery; and Balzac wrote: "What gratitude I owe to this doctor! He loves violins: when once I am at Paris I must find a Stradivarius to present to him."[*] [*] "Correspondance," vol. ii. p. 404.