BAIZAC'S LOVE-LETTERS.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 47, 19 November 1907, Page 3

BAIZAC'S LOVE-LETTERS.

When Balzac died, full of debt, as ho had . been all his life, his angry creditors ransacked his house; and, finding nothing there but. immpnßo heaps of papers, they 'flung them by armfuls out of every window. M. do 'Spoelbcrch, fa Belgian worshipper of Bal- . SKKjjl.Tvho recently died'at Royat, hearing of this,: to him, atrocious vandalism, rushed to : Paris and spent, literally, years wandering aboiits tho courts and alleys of the locality inrwhich Balzac's house stood. Soon it got noised about that an eccentric nobleman was ready to'buy up with pieces of gold any writings about .the no less eccentric writer who had died in that place, and all the neighbourhood- began to rummage in its cellars and dust-heaps.. ... .-The finds which M. Spoolberch made in cohsequcncc 'were, many of them' at least, of. the greatest interest. A love-letter of Balzac's came t-o him with some of tho butter which it,had been,used to wrap up, still sticking to it.- . Others —no less than seventy from, Balzac's cook, whose door it took him a. two-years' siege to force, as he was wont to tell with pride in his ultimate victory. Others, and the greatest number, of tli'e, novelist's love-letters came to him in scraps. • ~

' A bootmaker' and a grocer seem to ftr.ve made a corner in theso letters. They s<;i! them by the- quarter or tho eighth of » page at. a time to "le vicomto, as M. de Spoojberch came' to be known amongst dealers and '-.the like, having probably lon them up *in the belief that the ardent collector '.would pay them more for a scrip now and again than for a whole letter sold unmutilated. 1

It 1 is impossible to tell how many !°cr:.p: he: bought,-but. in the end M. do Spoelbvh was able 'to- . piece together three tji6im.nl pages ftf the famous "let-tors a ■ i.-ts'' (Mine.' Hanslia, whom Balzac married a snjt tim.t 'before' his death).