A Romantic Love Letter written by Honore de Balzac, French writer, to Madame Evelina Hanska, Polish Countess.

It is believed that it was written on October 6, 1833

Our love will bloom always fairer, fresher, more gracious, because it is a true love, and because genuine love is ever increasing.

It is a beautiful plant growing from year to year in the heart, ever extending its palms and branches, doubling every season its glorious clusters and perfumes; and, my dear life, tell me, repeat to me always, that nothing will bruise its bark or its delicate leaves, that it will grow larger in both our hearts, loved, free, watched over, like a life within our life…

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Honoré de Balzac (May 20, 1799 – August 18, 1850) was a nineteenth-century French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus, a sequence of almost 100 novels and plays collectively entitled La Comédie Humane, presents a broad panorama of French life in the years after the fall of Napoléon Bonaparte in 1815.

This romantic love letter was written to Emelina Hanska, his longtime paramour; whom he later married in 1850 however he died only six months after the wedding.

Balzac is regarded as one of the founding fathers of Realism in European literature, due to his extensive use of precise detail and unfiltered representation of society. His writing was profoundly influential on many famous writers, including Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, and Henry James.

An enthusiastic reader and independent thinker as a child, Balzac had trouble adapting himself to the teaching style of his grammar school. This pattern repeated itself throughout his life, creating tension and frustration as he tried to gain entry into the various circles of Paris. His fiction reflects his real-life difficulties, and includes scenes taken directly from his experience.

His first job was as a legal clerk, but he turned his back on the law after becoming disenchanted with its inhumanity. In addition to his career as a writer, Balzac attempted to be a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician. He failed in all of these efforts, but incorporated elements from them in his stories.

Balzac suffered from health problems throughout his life, due largely to his intense writing schedule. His relationship with his family was often strained by financial and personal drama, and he lost more than one friend over critical reviews.