With what longing, in the midst of his harassing life in Paris, he would look back to the charming long fireside chats he had had with Madame Hanska; and as the time to meet her again came nearer, with what satisfaction special tit-bits of gossip were reserved to be talked over and explained during the long evenings at Wierzchownia! How he loved to rush in to his sister with the latest news of the personages of his novels, as well as with brilliant plans to improve his general prospects; and with what enthusiasm he poured out to Theophile Gautier, or even to Leon Gozlan, his confidences of all sorts! Plans, absurd and impossible, but worked out with a business-like arrangement of detail which, when mingled with somnambulists and magnetisers, had a weird yet apparently fascinating effect on his hearers; magnificent diatribes against the wickedness of his special enemies, journalists, editors, and the Press in general; strange fancies to do with the world where Eugenie Grandet or Le Pere Goriot had their dwelling,--all these ideas, opinions, and feelings came from his lips with an eloquence, a force, and a life which were all convincing. Yet by a strange anomaly, which is sometimes seen in talkative and apparently unreserved people, Balzac in reality revealed very little of himself--in fact, we may often suspect him of using a flow of apparently spontaneous words as a screen to mask some hidden feeling. Therefore, when people who had considered themselves his intimate friends tried to write about him after his death, they found that they really knew little of the essentials of the man, and could only string together amusing anecdotes, proving him to have been eccentric, amusing, and essentially _bon camarade_, but giving little idea of his real personality and genius.