That he loved her, and that she loved him, in spite of these differences in their points of view, is to their mutual honor, but it adds to the mystery and to the enigmatical side of a romance that has hardly been equalled in modern times; and it accounts for the fact that some friction occurred between them later on, when my aunt found herself trying to restrain certain exuberances on the part of her husband regarding her own high lineage, about which she never thought much herself, though she had always tried to live up to the duties which it imposed upon her. I am mentioning this circumstance to explain certain exaggerations which we constantly find in Balzac's letters in regard to his marriage. His imagination was extremely vivid, and its fertility sometimes carried him far away into regions where it was nearly impossible to follow him, and where he really came to believe quite sincerely in things which had never existed. For instance in his correspondence with his mother and friends, he is always speaking of the necessity for Madame Hanska to obtain the permission of the Czar to marry him. This is absolutely untrue. My aunt did not require in the very least the consent of the Emperor to become Madame de Balzac. The difficulties connected with her marriage consisted in the fact that having been left sole heiress of her first husband's immense wealth, she did not think herself justified in keeping it after she had contracted another union, and with a foreigner. She therefore transferred her whole fortune to her daughter, reserving for herself only an annuity which was by no means considerable, and it was this arrangement that had to be sanctioned, not by the sovereign who had nothing to do with it, but by the Supreme Court of Russia, which at that time was located in St. Petersburg. Balzac, however, wishing to impress his French relatives with the grandeur of the marriage he was about to make, imagined this tale of the Czar's opposition, in order to add to his own importance and to that of his future wife, an invention which revolted my aunt so much that in that part of her husband's correspondence which was published by her a year or two before her death, she carefully suppressed all the passages which contained this assertion which had so thoroughly annoyed as well as angered her. I have sometimes wondered what she would have said had she seen appear in print the curious letter which Balzac wrote immediately after their wedding to Dr. Nacquart in which he described with such pomp the different high qualities, merits, and last but not least, brilliant positions occupied by his wife's relatives, beginning with Queen Marie Leszczinska, the consort of Louis XV, and ending with the husband of my father's stepdaughter, Count Orloff, whom the widest stretch of imagination could not have connected with my aunt.