Balzac

ncing at the fortifications, it penetrated inwards along the waste ground of the Trocadero, and crossed the Rue Chaillot at a point which has since become the Place d'Iena. Its direction fro

of the Seine, the Champ de Mars, the Ecole

; and an arrangement was made with the landlord by which a notice-board hung continually on the door, with the words: "This apartment to let." In reality the tenant often sojourned there still, and his cook stayed on the premises to look after them,

out in gold. The entire room was hung in red stuff as a background, and this was covered with fluted Indian muslin, having a top and bottom beading of flame-coloured stuff ornamented with elegant black arabesques. Under the muslin the red assumed a rose tint, which later was repeated in the window curtains of muslin lined with taffety, and fringed in black and red. Six silver sconces, each supporting two candles, projected from the wall above the divan, to light those sitting or lying there. From the dazzlingly white ceiling was suspended an unpolished silver-gilt lustre; and the cornice round it was i

tain that Balzac was not always exact in his statements; on the other, Werdet's memory, in the seventies, when he wrote his Portrait Intime of the novelist, was as certainly now and again treacherous. An example of such discrepancy is furnished by the information given concerning Seraphita, which Werdet says he bought from Buloz at the end of 1834, and for which he had to wait till December 1835. He even makes it a reproach that

By whiles this hermaphrodite seems to respond to the affection of each admirer, and by whiles to withdraw on to a higher plane of existence whither their mortality hinders them from following. To the old pastor of the village, Seraphita-Seraphitus talks with assurance of the essence of phenomena and the invisible world, but, forsooth, only to initiate the shades that visit spiritualistic sean

to which the animal transports, according to the strength of the apparatus, as much as the various organisms can absorb of this fluid, which issues thence transformed into will; that our sentiments are movements of the fluid, which proceeds from us by jerks when we are angry, and which weighs on our nerves when we are in expectation; that the current of this king of liquids, according to the pressure of thought and feeling, spreads in waves or diminishes and thins, then collects again, to gush forth in flashes. He believes also that our ideas are complete, organized beings (the theosophic notion) which live in the invisible world and influence our destinies; that, concentrated in a powerful brain, they can master the brains of other people, and traverse immense distances in the twinkling of an eye. In short, he anticipates not a little of the science of the present day, yet mixing up the true and false in his guesses by the very exuberance of his fancy. At the close, he gives us his vision o

It is neither flesh nor fowl; and, exception made for some fine passages, more at the beginning

ly to dine with him at Very's, and to finish up the evening at the Porte-Saint-Martin Theatre, with ices afterwards at Tortoni's. The whole affair was carried out in grand style. The novelist had on his war-paint, and was accompanied by a lady, young, pretty, whose name is not revealed to us. Werdet's vis-a-vis was Madame Louise Lemercier, a benevolent blue-stocking of that day, who was a Providence to needy men of letters. When dinner was over, Balzac's elegant equipage, with its mighty coachman and its diminutive groo

ed to Madame Carraud's at Frapesle. In October he was at La Boulonniere, where he put the last touches to Pea-Blossom, better known as the Marriage Contract, which came out before the end of December. His fits of depression alternated with spurts of cheerfulness nearly every week, acc

feet and pay me more

about the Country Doctor, so that Werdet is c

y liabilities in Novemb

October. To his sis

dregs. In vain I work fourteen

starting for Austria, where Madame Hanska was staying. His brain, he said, was empty; his imagination d

een September and November; but the Letters to the

erdet, he continued, was his Archibald Constable (vide Walter Scott); their fortunes were thenceforward indissoluble; and the day was approaching when they would meet in their carriages in the Bois de Boulogne and turn their detractors green with envy. This flattery was the jam enveloping the information that he had drawn on his publisher for another fifteen hundred francs; there was also a promise made that he would come back with his pockets full of manuscri

into fresh extravagance of one kind or another, his liabilities had a fatal tendency to grow; and at present even more than before, since he was puffed up by the lionizing he had enjoyed abroad. It was hardly to be expected that a man should study economy who saw himself already appointed to the Secretaryship for F

the Count de Grammont. Sandeau was not grand enough for the post. The reason given by Balzac to Madame Hanska was Jules' idleness, nonchalance, and sentimentality. As a matter of fact, Sandeau did not care to play always second fiddle, and to write tragedies or

ather with a view to advertizing him at the ensuing Salon, although he asserted it was because he wanted to correct a false impression given of him by Danton's caricature in the earlier months of the year. The likeness produced by Boulanger he esteemed a good one, rendering his Coligny, Peter the Great persistence, which, together with an intrepid faith in the future, he said was the basis of his character. The future hovered as a perpetual mirage in all his

ence of hostile criticism. A press campaign in his favour could be better and more cheaply waged in a paper under his entire control. His plan was not to create a journal, but to revive one. In 1835 the Chronique de Paris, formerly called the Globe, was on its last legs, albeit it had been ably edited by William Duckett; and the proprietor, Bethune the publisher, was only too glad to listen to Balzac's overtures. By dint of puffing the new enterprise, a company was formed with a nominal capital of a hundred tho

urdays. The collaborators met at Werdet's house to discuss and compare notes. Generall

s issue," he asked, "if each

reply, "you have merely to say: 'Let there b

to myself nothing except th

punning on the French word etrang

word etrangere, he

Balzac, adding

which is foreign to all governments present and past and future

forehead-"I have only to write

ections?" quer

h the cor

all go on dry bread and water until a

him with flowers; and Balzac, in all good faith, complacently accepted the honour. Around him, the laughter broke out fast and furious; and, at length, he joined in with v

t dinner was given in the Rue Cassini flat, amidst a display of all its tenant's gold and silver plate, liberated from the pawnbroker's for the occasion by a timely advance of two thousand francs from Werdet. The feast was an entire success, and an appointment was fixed for the next day at the Russian's hotel. Alas! when the envoy went, he received, sandwiched in the guest's thanks for the royal entertainment of the preceding evening, an announcement of th

alzac. Suiting the action to his words, he dumped down on to the floor a heavy bag that chinked as it struck the hall tiles. "Monsieur de Balzac does not live here," was the servant's reply. "Then is the master of the house in?" asked the man. "No, but the mistress is." "Then tell her I have six thousand francs for Monsieur de Balzac." The servant vanished and soon the lady of the mansion appeared and offered to sign the receipt herself. To this the man demurred. He must either see Monsieur de Balzac or must take the money away again. There was a hurri

matter amicably, Buloz entered an action against Balzac to compel him to continue the publication of the Lily in the Valley in the Revue de Paris. Three parts had been given. It was the end which the Review demanded, and ten thousand francs damages for the delay. The case was heard in May 1836, after months of bitter controversy, in which both sides had their ardent supporters. The most was made by the plaintiff's barrister of Balzac's previous disputes with other editors, who had had to complain of his tardiness in completing articles or stories. A letter was also put in, signed by Alexandre Dumas, Eugene Sue, Frederic Soulie, and others, stating that it was usual for authors to allow the communication of their productions to the Revue Francaise of Saint Petersburg, with a view to comba

ction to the edition that Werdet was about to publish. In the course of it he declared: "If some persons, deceived by caricatures, false portraits, penny-a-liners, and lies, credit me with a colossal fortune, palaces, and above all, with frequent favours from women . . . I here declare to them that I am a poor artist, absorbed in art, working at a long history of society, which will be either good or bad, but at which I work by necessity, without shame, just as Rossini ha

publisher. That was in July 1836. Scarcely six months after, when Werdet was threatened with a bankruptcy which was likely to involve him-a repetition in minor degree of Scott's entanglement with Constable-he veered completely round, called Werdet a rotten plank, an empty head, an obstinate mule, and other name

more considerable abroad than in France. The author complained of the smallness of the numbers sold in France compared with those of foreign editions; but

s the most famous military battle ever fought. Possibly the amount of early personal biography in the book-yet a good deal romanced-led him to this conviction. Possibly, too, the richness with which he adorned its style helped to foster the opinion he held, which critics have not ratified. Not even Lamartine, his eulogist, found much to say in favour of the story. To the first part a

o a greater extent than Richardson, Balzac has placed the struggle on the physical plane. Madame de Mortsauf permits de Vandenesse to make love to her, to caress her, and she accords him everything with the single exception of that which would confer on her husband the right to divorce

Hanska was jealous and on good grounds, or else the Duchess de Castries, to whom he said that, in writing the book, he had caught himself shedding tears. His reminiscences of Madame de Berny aided him in composing the figure of the heroine, whose death-bed scene was soon to become sober reality.

ading some of his books, supposed him to be a gambler and debauchee and was trying to turn her niece against him, it was not astonishing that he should have been completely unnerved. While at Sache, where he had come to stay with some friends, the de Margonnes, in order to terminate the work he was obliged to do for Madame Bechet, he had an attack of apoplexy; and, on recovering from it, was glad to seize an opportunity offered him of a journey to Italy to escape for a while from the scene of his toiling and moiling and to have a radical change. His good genius on this oc

Werdet's bad circumstances forced him to pledge himself in several quarters in order to raise some ready money for his immediate wants; and, being pledged, he was bound to produce at high pressure. His Old Maid, which he sold to the Presse for eight thou

s dead after a fortnight, and it too

only the coffin in view as a r

rst of all-the Presse, the Constitutionnel, the Siecle, the Debats, the Messager-had to be composed hurriedly and without the corrections which were the sine qua non of Balzac's excellence; and consequently it contained many imperfections inherent in such kinds of literary work. There was irony in the situation. Hitherto, he had despised the daily press and the journalists that supplied it with matter, chiefly, it must be confessed, because of the slatings he had received through these organs of information; and he had revenged himself for the attacks by pillorying the journalistic profession in his novels. Lousteau, Finot, Blondet, and other members of the press appear in his pages as unprincipled men, only too willing to sell themselves to the highest bidder. Of course, such retaliation carried with it injustice; and men of high principle, like Jules Janin, resented this prejudiced condemnation of a class for no better reason than its having black sheep, which existed in every circle, trade and profession. Now, Janin had an easy task in convicting of inconsistency an accuser who, since it suited his purpose, was fain to belong to the press brotherhood. The real de