"If you remember, madame, the pleasure your conversation gave to a certain traveler, making Paris live for him in Milan, you will not be surprised that he should lay one of his works at your feet, as a token of gratitude for so many delightful evenings spent in your society, nor that he should seek for it in the shelter of your name which, in old times, was given to not a few of the tales by one of your early writers, dear to the Milanese. You have a Eugenie, already beautiful, whose clever smile proclaims her to have inherited from you the most precious gifts a woman can possess, and whose childhood, it is certain, will be rich in all those joys which a sad mother refused to the Eugenie of these pages. If Frenchmen are accused of bring frivolous and inconstant, I, you see, am Italian in my faithfulness and attachments. How often, as I write the name of Eugenie, have my thoughts carried me back to the cool stuccoed drawing-room and little garden of the /Viccolo dei Capuccini/, which used to resound to the dear child's merry laughter, to our quarrels, and our stories. You have left the /Corso/ for the /Tre Monasteri/, where I know nothing of your manner of life, and I am forced to picture you, no longer amongst the pretty things, which doubtless still surround you, but like one of the beautiful heads of Raffaelle, Titian, Correggio or Allori which, in their remoteness, seem to us like abstractions. If this book succeeds in making its way across the Alps, it will prove to you the lively gratitude and respectful friendship of your humble servant, "DE BALZAC." LA PRINCESSE BAGRATION--LA COMTESSE BOSSI--MADAME KISSELEFF-- LA PRINCESSE DE SCHONBURG--MADAME JAROSLAS POTOCKA-- LA BARONNE DE PFAFFINS--LA COMTESSE DELPHINE POTOCKA Several women whom Balzac knew, but who apparently had no special influence over his life, are mentioned here; he evidently did not care enough for them or did not know them well enough to include their names in the dedicatory register of the /Comedie humaine/. This, however, by no means exhausts the list of his acquaintances among women. Many of them he had met through his intimacy with his "Polar Star"; he was indeed so popular that he once exclaimed to her that he was overwhelmed with Russian princesses and took to flight to avoid them.