Honoré de Balzac had definitively launched his literary career with his 1831 novel, The Wild Ass’s Skin.

Around this time, he had ended his relationship with his influential mistress, Laure de Berny, to whom he had remained devoted for a decade.

Mademoiselle Hanska, a wealthy Polish countess, had in 1832 written an anonymous fan letter to Balzac, signing it L’Etrangere (“the foreign lady”).

The two had begun a correspondence; a courtship soon followed.

A prolific writer, he churns out three or four novels a year, maintains a voluminous correspondence, and writes articles, reviews and historical dramas.

Although successful, his spending habits are so uncontrolled that 1838 finds him two hundred and thirty thousand francs in debt.