The "Foreign Lady" was a Polish woman of noble birth, Mme. Hanska, who before her marriage was Countesse Eveline Rzewuska, who lived at her château of Wierzchownia, in Volhynia, with her husband, who possessed vast estates, and her daughter, Anna, who was still a child. Mme. Hanska had read the Scenes from Private Life, and she had been filled with enthusiasm for the author's talent and with a great hope of being able to exert an influence over his mind and to direct his ideas.

The mysterious nature of this strange correspondence pleased Balzac: he was able, in the course of it, to give free rein to his imagination, and at the same time to picture her to himself as a type of woman such as he had longed for through many years, endowing her with a beauty which represented all the virtues. His first letters, although dignified and reserved, nevertheless revealed the fact that he was seeking for some woman in whom he could confide, and very soon he began to pour out his heart freely. It is in this collection of letters, which extend from January, 1833, down to 1847, that we must search for the true details of his life, rather than in any of those collections of doubtful anecdotes, which show it only in the distorted form of caricature, and only too often have no foundation of truth. Nevertheless it is necessary to read them with a certain amount of critical reservation, for he often shows himself in them in a false light, which probably seemed necessary to him, in order to carry out the diplomatic course which he had undertaken, and which terminated in his marriage.

From 1833 onward he was destined to lead a double life, the one before the eyes of the world, with its gesticulations, its eccentricities, its harlequinades, that left the lookers-on gaping with amazement; and the other his secret life, which he revealed only to Mme. Hanska, day by day,—his slave-like toil, his burden of debts which no amount of effort seemed to lighten, his prodigious hopes, and from time to time his desperate weariness.

After the publication of The Country Doctor the confused plan of his vast work took more definite form, the scattered parts began to fit together, and he foresaw the immense monument in which he was destined to embody an entire social epoch.

"The day when he was first inspired with this idea was a wonderful day for him," Mme. Surville has recorded. "He set forth from the Rue Cassini, where he had taken up his residence after leaving the Rue de Tournon, and hurried to the Faubourg Poissonière, where I was then living.

"'Salute me,' he cried out joyously, 'for I am on the high road to become a genius!'

"He then proceeded to unfold his plan to us, although it still rather frightened him. In spite of the vastness of his brain, time alone would enable him to work out such a plan in detail!

"'How splendid it will be if I succeed!' he said as he strode up and down the parlour; he was too excited to remain in one place and joy radiated from all his features. 'From now on they are welcome to call me Balzac the tale-smith! I shall go on tranquilly squaring my stones and enjoying in advance the amazement of all those purblind critics when they finally discover the great structure that I am building!'"

What vital force there was in all the characters of Balzac's novels, and how well entitled he was to boast that he was running in competition with the whole social structure! He had not yet formulated his conception of the Human Comedy, but he was on the road to it when he planned to rearrange the volumes already published with others that he had in preparation, in a series of scenes in which the representative types of the different social classes should develop. This was the first rough draft of his later great collected editions. In order to carry out his plan, he had to break with his former publishers, pay back advance royalties, and defend law-suits. His collective edition took the general title of Studies of the Manners and Customs of the Nineteenth Century, and was divided into Scenes of Private Life, Scenes of Provincial Life, and Scenes of Parisian Life. He gave the rights of publication of this collective edition first to Madame the Widow Béchet and later to Edmond Werclet, in consideration of the sum of twenty-seven thousand francs. This was the most advantageous contract that he had made up to this time, and he hoped that it would free him from all his debts, with the exception of what he owed his mother. In addition to his previously published volumes, he included in this edition the following new works: Eugénie Grandet, The Illustrious Gaudissart, The Maranas, Ferragus, The Duchess of Langeais, The Girl with the Golden Eyes, The Search for the Absolute, The Marriage Contract, The Old Maid, and the first part of Lost Illusions. But he did not include either The Chouans or his philosophic works.

Twenty-seven thousand francs was an enormous sum, without parallel save that paid to Chateaubriand for his collected works; but in Balzac's case the payment was made in the form of notes for long periods, and he was left without ready money. In the midst of all his other labours he had to rack his brain in order to find some way of cashing these notes. "Finding that I had nothing to hope for from the bankers," he wrote to Mme. Hanska, "I remembered that I owed three hundred francs to my doctor, so I called upon him in order to settle my account with one of my bits of negotiable paper, and he gave me change amounting to seven hundred francs, minus the discount. From there I made my way to my landlord, an old grain dealer in the Halle, and paid my rent with another of my notes, which he accepted, giving me back another seven hundred francs, minus the exchange; from him I went to my tailor, who, without demur, took over another of my thousand franc notes, entered it in his ledger, and paid me the whole thousand francs!

"Seeing that I was in for a run of luck, I took a cab and drove to the home of a friend, who is a millionaire twice over, a friend of twenty years standing. As it happened, he had just returned from Berlin. I found him in, and at once he hurried to his desk, gave me two thousand francs, and relieved me of two more of the Widow Béchet's notes, without even looking at them. Ha! ha!—I returned to my rooms and summoned my vendor of wood and my grocer, in order to settle my accounts, and, in place of a five hundred franc bank note, slipped each of them one of the widow's five hundred franc promissory notes! By four o'clock I was free once more and ready to meet the next day's obligations. My mind is at ease for a month to come. I can seat myself once more in the fragile swing of my dreams and let my imagination keep me swinging. Ecco, Signora!

"My dear, faithful wife-to-be, did I not owe you this faithful picture of your future home life in Paris? Yes, but here are five thousand francs squandered, out of the twenty-seven thousand, and before setting out for Geneva I still have ten thousand to pay: three thousand to my mother, one thousand to my sister, and six thousand in judgments and costs.—'Good gracious, my dear man, where will you raise all that?'—Out of my ink-well!" (Letter dated October 31, 1833.)

The tone of the correspondence had become more tender and confidential, mirroring back an intimate picture of a laborious existence, laden with anxieties,—and the reason is that Balzac now knew his "Foreign Lady," for he had met her at Neufchâtel, whence he returned overflowing with enthusiasm. From the date of the very first letters he had received his imagination had taken fire, and he had responded with an answering ardour to this woman who had so ingenuously laid bare her heart to him. It was a romantic adventure upon which he set forth rejoicing. He had sent to the fair unknown a lock of his hair, which he had allowed to remain for some time uncut, in order to send one as long as possible; he had presented her with a perfumed casket, destined to be the mysterious receptacle of his letters; a friend had drawn a sketch of his apartment in the Rue Cassini, so that she might see what a pleasant little den the toiler had; and lastly he inserted in a copy of The Country Doctor an aquarelle, in which he was portrayed in the somewhat exaggerated guise of his own Doctor Bernassis. This was a sacrifice to which he consented for love's sake, because he had always refused to let anyone, even Gérard, paint his portrait, insisting "that he was not handsome enough to be worth preserving in oil."

But letter-writing and delicate attentions in the form of gifts were far from satisfying him. He wanted to see her, to talk with her, to put into speech shades of feeling so delicate that the written word was powerless to reproduce them. And presently chance aided and abetted him. Mme. Hanska left Wierzchnownia for a summer vacation in Switzerland, and Balzac, on the trail of one of those business opportunities for which he was ever on the watch, was obliged to go to Besançon at precisely the same season. His mission related to the manufacture of a special kind of paper, to be made exclusively for his works, and which he imagined would speedily make his fortune. Since she was to be at Neufchâtel and he at Besançon, how could they resist the pleasure of a first meeting? Permission was asked to call, and permission was granted; and Balzac, impatient and intoxicated with hope, left Paris, September 22d, arrived at Neufchâtel on the 25th, and for five days enjoyed profound happiness, tender and unalloyed. They met, and the sentiments born of their correspondence, far from being destroyed by this meeting, were on the contrary exalted into trembling avowals, transports and protestations of eternal love. Balzac returned to Paris radiant with his new-found joy. He wrote as follows to his sister Laure, the habitual recipient of his confidences:

"I found down yonder all that is needed to flatter the thousand vanities of that animal known as man, of which species the poet still remains the vainest variety. But why do I use the word vanity? No, that has nothing to do with it. I am happy, very happy in thought, and so far all for the best and in all honour . . .

"I say nothing to you of her colossal wealth; of what consequence is that, beside a perfection of beauty which I can compare to no one except the Princess of Bellejoyeuse, only infinitely better?"

Mme. Hanska was profoundly religious and a practical Catholic; and from this time onward she exerted an influence over the trend of Balzac's thoughts. Indeed, he brought back from their first interviews the germ idea of his mystical story, Séraphita. The project of the special paper having failed to materialise at Besançon, he tried to carry it out through the mediation of Mme. Carraud, but with no better success.

The Country Doctor proved a source of nothing but disappointments to Balzac, who received an adverse decision from the courts, in the lawsuit bought by Mame, because he had failed to furnish copy at the stipulated dates, and found himself facing a judgment of three thousand francs damages, besides another thousand francs for corrections made at his expense. The cost of the latter was, for that matter, always charged to him by his publishers in all his contracts, because his method of work raised this item to an unreasonable sum. For one of his short stories, Pierette, Balzac demanded no less than seventeen successive revised proofs. And his corrections, his additions and his suppressions formed such an inextricable tangle that the typesetters refused to work more than an hour at a time over his copy.

The failure of the work on which he had counted so much and the loss of his lawsuit did not discourage him. To borrow his own phrase, he "buried himself in the most frightful labours." Between the end of 1833 and 1834 he produced Eugénie Grandet, The Illustrious Gaudissart, The Girl with the Golden Eyes, and The Search for the Absolute. The paper which he used for writing was a large octavo in form, with a parchment finish. His manuscripts often bore curious annotations and drawings. On the cover of that of Eugénie Grandet he had drawn a ground plan of old Grandet's house, and had compiled a list of names, from which he chose those of the characters in the story. Balzac attached an extreme importance to proper names, and he did not decide which to give to his heroes until after long meditation, for he believed that names were significant, even to the extent of influencing their destinies. The manuscript of The Search for the Absolute bears witness to his constant preoccupation about money. He had inscribed on it the following account:

Total for June 7,505 francs.
Total for July  1,500 francs.
Floating debt  3,700 francs.
                    12,705 francs.

And melancholically he wrote below it, "Deficit, 1,705!" His writing was small, compressed, irregular and often far from easy to read; when he suppressed a passage, he used a form of pothook erasure which rendered the condemned phrase absolutely illegible.

In 1834, Honoré de Balzac, while still keeping his apartment in the Rue Cassini, transferred his residence to Chaillot, No. 13, Rue des Bastailles (now the Avenue d'Iena), in a house situated on the site of the hotel of Prince Roland Bonaparte. This was his bachelor quarters, where he received his letters, under the name of Madame the Widow Durand. He had by no means abandoned his projects of luxurious surroundings, and in The Girl with the Golden Eyes he has given a description of his own parlour, which shows that he had in a measure already realised his desires:

"One-half of the boudoir," he wrote, "described an easy and graceful semicircle, while the opposite side was perfectly square, and in the centre glistened a mantelpiece of white marble and gold. The entrance was through a side door, hidden by a rich portière of tapestry, and facing a window. Within the horseshoe curve was a genuine Turkish divan, that is to say, a mattress resting directly upon the floor, a mattress as large as a bed, a divan fifty feet in circumference and covered with white cashmere, relieved by tufts of black and poppy-red silk arranged in a diamond pattern. The headboard of this immense bed rose several inches above the numerous cushions which still further enriched it by the good taste of their harmonious tints. The walls of this boudoir were covered with red cloth, overlaid with India muslin fluted like a Corinthian column, the flutings being alternately hollowed and rounded, and finished at top and bottom with a band of poppy-red cloth embroidered with black arabesques. Seen through the muslin, the poppy-red turned to rose colour, the colour emblematic of love; and the same effect was repeated in the window curtains, which were also of India muslin lined with rose-coloured taffeta and ornamented with fringes of mixed black and poppy-red. Six vermilion sconces, each containing two candles, were fixed at even intervals to the wall, for the purpose of lighting the divan. The ceiling, from the centre of which hung a chandelier of dull vermilion, was a dazzling white, and the cornice was gilded. The carpet resembled an Oriental shawl, exhibiting the patterns and recalling the poetry of Persia, the land where it had been woven by the hands of slaves. The furniture was all upholstered in white cashmere, emphasised by trimmings of the same combination of black and poppy-red. The clock, the candle-sticks, all the ornaments, were of white marble and gold. The only table in the room had a cashmere covering. Graceful jardinières contained roses of all species having blossoms of red or white."

Théophile Gautier has borne witness to the accuracy of this description; but as though wishing to show him the double aspect of his life, Balzac, after willingly exhibiting in detail all the luxury of his boudoir, led him to a corner recess, necessitated by the rounded form of one side of the room; and there, hidden behind the ostentatious decoration, there was nothing but a narrow iron cot, a table and a chair; this was where he worked.

Balzac disliked being disturbed while working; and, for the double reason of avoiding unwelcome visitors and throwing his creditors off the scent, he had invented a whole series of pass-words, which it was necessary to know before one could penetrate to his apartment. A visitor, let into the secret, would say to the porter, "The season for plums has arrived," thanks to which he acquired the right to enter the house. But this was only the first degree of initiation. A servant would next come forward and ask, "What does Monsieur wish?" and one had to be able to answer, "I have brought some Brussels lace." This constituted the second degree and resulted in permission to ascend the stairs. Then, with the door of the sanctuary just ajar, the visitor could not hope to see it swing fully open before him until he had made the assertion that "Mme. Durand was in good health!" Whenever Balzac suspected that his pass-words had been betrayed, he invented a new set, which he communicated only to those few chosen spirits whom he cared to receive. And this method of protecting himself caused him, when with his friends, to indulge in great outbursts of his vast, resounding laughter.

In spite of envy and conspiracies, Balzac's reputation was now established; he had become one of those writers who are widely discussed and whose sayings and doings are a current topic of conversation. At the same time, he was the prey of the low-class journals, which attacked him maliciously. At this period, Balzac was passing through a second attack of dandyism. He was once again to be seen at the Opéra, at the Bouffes and at the fashionable salons. He sported a monstrous walking stick, the handle of which was set with turquoises; he showed himself in the box occupied by an ultra-fashionable set known as the "Tigers," wearing a blue coat, adorned with golden buttons, "buttons," he said, "wrought by the hand of a fairy"; and he had a "divine lorgnette," which had been made for him by the optician of the Observatory. He began to be laughed at; and, gossip taking a hand, his glorious luxury was attributed to the generosity of an elderly Englishwoman, Lady Anelsy, whose lucky favourite he was supposed to be. His walking stick especially—a stick that, in his estimation, was worthy of Louis XIV—excited curiosity. It was ridiculed, decried and admired. Mme. de Girardin wrote a novel around it, Monsieur de Balzac's Walking Stick, in which she attributed to it the power of rendering invisible whoever held it in his left hand.

He had a carriage adorned with his monogram, surmounted by the arms of the d'Entragues; he frequented the salons of the Rothschilds, and of Mme. Appony, the wife of the Austrian ambassador; he gave magnificent dinners to Latour-Mezeray, to Sandeau, to Nodier, to Malitourne and to Rossini, who declared that he had "never seen, eaten or drunken anything better, even at the tables of kings."

Then, suddenly, Balzac returned to the fierce heat of production; he abandoned his friends and acquaintances, and became invisible for months at a time, buried in his hiding-place at Chaillot, or else taking refuge at the home of M. de Margonne at Saché, or of Mme. Carraud at Frapésle. And when he reappeared, it was with his hands laden with masterpieces, his eye more commanding and his brow held high with noble pride. With a speed of production that no one has ever equalled he turned forth, one after another, his great novels, Old Goriot, The Lily in the Valley, Séraphita, The Atheist's Mass, The Interdiction, The Cabinet of Antiques, Facino Cane, and he revised, corrected and remodelled a part of his earlier works into the Philosophic Studies which he brought out through Werdet, and his Studies of Manners, published by Mme. Béchet. His plan had grown still larger, the formidable creation with which his brain was teeming was taking organic shape, and he now perceived the architecture of his vast monument. He expounded it to Mme. Hanska, with justifiable pride:

"I believe that by 1838 the three divisions of this gigantic work will be, if not completed, at least superposed, so that it will be possible to judge the mass of the structure.

"The Studies of Manners are intended to represent all social effects so completely that no situation in life, no physiognomy, no character of man or woman, no manner of living, no profession, no social zone, no section of France, nor anything whatever relating to childhood, maturity or old age, to politics, justice or war, shall be forgotten.

"This being determined, the history of the human heart traced thread by thread, and the history of society recorded in all its parts, we have the foundation. There will be no imaginary incidents in it; it will consist solely of what is happening everywhere.

"Then comes the second story of my structure, the Philosophic Studies, for after the effects we shall examine the causes. In the Studies of Manners I shall already have painted for you the play of the emotions and the movement of life. In the Philosophic Studies I shall expound the why of the emotions and the wherefore of life; what is the range and what are the conditions outside of which neither society nor man can exist; and, after having surveyed society in order to describe it, I shall survey it again in order to judge it. Accordingly the Studies of Manners contain typical individuals, while the Philosophic Studies contain individualised types. Thus on all sides I shall have created life: for the type by individualising it, and for the individual by converting him into a type. I shall endow the fragment with thought, and I shall have endowed thought with individual life.

"Then, after the effects and causes, will come the Analytic Studies, of which the Physiology of Marriage will form part: for after the effects and causes, the next thing to be sought is the principles. The manners are the performance, the causes are the stage setting and properties, and the principles are the author; but in proportion as my work circles higher and higher into the realms of thought, it narrows and condenses. If it requires twenty-four volumes for the Studies of Manners, it will not require more than fifteen for the Philosophic Studies, and it will not require more than nine for the Analytic Studies. In this way, man, society and humanity will have been described, judged and analysed, without repetition, resulting in a work which will stand as the Thousand and One Nights of the Occident.

"When the whole is completed, my edifice achieved, my pediment sculptured, my scaffolding cleared away, my final touches given, it will be proved that I was either right or wrong. But after having been a poet, after having demonstrated an entire social system, I shall revert to science in an Essay on the Human Powers. And around the base of my palatial structure, with boyish glee I shall trace the immense arabesque of my Hundred Droll Tales."

Think of the courage that it needed not to recoil before this superhuman task, planned with such amplitude and precision! Yet, aside from a few rare days of discouragement, Balzac did not feel that it was beyond his powers. After each brief period of weakening, his optimism always reappeared, and having indicated his goal, he concluded: "Some day when I have finished, we can have a good laugh. But today I must work."

Accordingly he worked, not only "today," but every day, in the midst of the material uncertainty created by his accumulated debts, his lawsuits, and his need of luxury; and his method of work was to retire at six o'clock in the evening, rise at two in the morning, and remain sometimes more than sixteen hours before his table, wrestling with his task.

Nevertheless he was able to escape in May, 1835, for a trip to Vienna to see Mme. Hanska, enjoy a fortnight of happiness, and return to Paris with his heart in holiday mood. His good humour never deserted him. He related how, lacking any knowledge of German, he devised a way of paying his postilion. At each relay he summoned him to the door of the carriage and, looking him fixedly in the eye, dropped kreutzers into his hands one by one, and when he saw the postilion smile he withdrew the last kreutzer, knowing that he had been amply paid!

Returning to Paris by the eleventh of June, Balzac found nothing but a new crop of sorrows and anxieties awaiting him, together with "three or four months of hard labour" in perspective. His publisher, Werdet, had not been able to meet his payments, and his sister Laure had been obliged to pawn all her brother's silver at the Mont-de-Piété, in order to save the notes from being protested. On the other hand, his mother was seriously ill; it was feared the result would be either death or insanity, and his brother Henri had reached a state in which he was on the point of blowing out his brains. Family sorrows, money troubles, such was perpetually his fate! and accordingly he redoubled his courage. He had been working not more than sixteen hours consecutively, but now he worked for twenty-four at a stretch, and after five hours sleep began again this new schedule which practically meant an average of twenty-one and one-half working hours per day. He would be able to earn eight thousand francs, but in order to do so he must deliver within forty days the last chapters of Séraphita and the Young Brides to the Revue de Paris, the Lily in the Valley to the Revue des Deux Mondes, and an article for the Conservateur, all of which was equivalent to writing four hundred and forty-eight pages.

And still this did not satisfy him! His ambition pushed him once again towards his earlier political designs. He counted upon the support of the reviews for which he was writing, he planned to found two newspapers, and dreamed of creating a party composed of the intellectual element, of which he would naturally be the leader. It was in this spirit that, during the last months of 1835, he acquired the Chronique de Paris, of which he became the director. To this weekly periodical, which henceforth appeared twice a week, Balzac summoned a brilliant editorial staff—he always disdained to supervise any other than shining lights—including Gustave Planche, Nodier, Théophile Gautier, Charles de Bernard, while the illustrations were furnished by Gavarni and Daumier. Since he already aspired to a foreign ministry or ambassadorship, he reserved the department of foreign affairs for himself, and for more than a year he treated of European diplomacy with extraordinary penetration and accuracy. He made prodigious efforts to keep his review on its feet, but in spite of his activity and the talent of his collaborators, the Chronique exerted little or no influence, and remained very poor in subscribers.

While he was still editing it he once more underwent the singular and vexatious experience of being imprisoned. Although a good citizen, he energetically refused to fulfill his duties in the national guard, which he deemed unbefitting the dignity of an artist and author. In March, 1835, he had already been detained for seven days in the Hôtel Bazancourt; so in order to avoid a similar annoyance in the future he hired his apartment under another name than his own. But his sergeant-major, a dentist by profession and a man of resource, succeeded in capturing him and landing him safely in the "Hôtel des Haricots." (Popular nickname for the debtors' prison. [Translator's Note.]) He was locked up without a penny in his pocket, and in order to soften the rigours of his captivity must needs appeal for help to his publisher, Werdet. His hardships, however, proved to be tolerably mild when once he was supplied with money. In the prison he met Eugène Sue, who was detained for the same cause, and who carried the thing off in lordly fashion, having sumptuous repasts brought to him on his own silver service. Owing to this attitude there was a certain coldness at first between the two novelists, but before long they joined forces in order to enliven their days of imprisonment. Eugène Sue could draw, and he made a pen-and-ink sketch of a horse, a horseman and a stretch of seashore, which Balzac inscribed as follows: "Drawn in prison in the Hôtel Bazancourt, where we were under punishment for not having mounted guard, in accordance with the decree of the grocers of Paris."

A still harsher prison, that of Clichy, very nearly fell to Balzac's lot, a few months later. His efforts to carry on the Chronique had been in vain, and he had been obliged to abandon it, toward the middle of 1837, with a fresh accumulation of debts. One of his creditors, William Duckett, pressed him so vigorously for a sum of ten thousand francs that Balzac was forced to go into hiding, and the process-servers were unable to discover him. A woman finally betrayed his retreat, and one morning the officers of the law presented themselves at the home of Mme. de Visconti, the lady who had given him asylum. Balzac was caught, but not taken, for the generous woman promptly paid the debt demanded of him.

Once again he had been saved, but now all his creditors were at his heels, and he was like a hare before them, never sure where he could lay his head. In order to satisfy them he added toil to toil, story to story, notwithstanding the sorrow caused him by the loss of Mme. de Berny, that early love who had protected his youth and sustained his courage, with an unwavering devotion, a heart of wife and mother in one. His troubles were now constant, and he was forced to carry on a famous litigation with Buloz, director of the Revue des Deux Mondes, who had forwarded to the Revue Etrangère of St. Petersburg uncorrected proofs of the Lily of the Valley. In defending himself he was defending the common rights of all authors.

Théophile Gautier, whom he had invited to collaborate on the Chronique de Paris at a time when the author of Mademoiselle de Maupin was but little known, has left some vivid recollections of Balzac at this period:

"It was," he writes, "in that same boudoir (the luxurious chamber in the Rue des Batailles) that he gave us a splendid dinner, on which occasion he lighted with his own hands all the candles in the vermilion sconces as well as those in the chandelier and candlesticks. The guests were the Marquis de B— (de Belloy) and the artist L.B. (Louis Boulanger). Although quite sober and abstemious by habit, Balzac did not disdain on occasion the festive board and flowing bowl; he ate with a whole-hearted satisfaction that was appetising to see, and he drank in true Pantagruelian fashion. Four bottles of the white wine of Vouvray, one of the headiest wines known, in no way affected his strong brain, and produced no other result than to add a slightly keener sparkle to his gaiety.

"Characteristic touch! At this splendid feast, furnished by Chevot, there was no bread. But when one has all the superfluities, of what use are the necessities?"

Balzac, who ordinarily ate quite soberly, consumed an enormous quantity of fruit, pears, strawberries and grapes. He held that they were good for his health, and that they suited his temperament, overheated as it was by his abuse of coffee and his sleepless nights. Alcohol did not agree with him, and as to tobacco, he detested it to such a degree that he refused to employ servants who had the habit of smoking.

His intellectual conceptions intermingled with the current events of life, and he drew no very clear demarcation between the characters and adventures which he created and the actualities of life. The History of the Thirteen and the exploits of the association of which Ferragus was chief gave Balzac the idea of forming a secret society, after the manner of the one he had conceived, the members of which were to afford one another aid and protection under all circumstances. This society he called the Red Horse, from the name of the restaurant where the charter members met. They were Théophile Gautier, Léon Gozlan, Alphonse Karr, Louis Desnoyers, Eugène Guinot, Altorache, Merle, and Granier de Cassagnac, all of whom swore the oath of fidelity and enthusiastically named Balzac Grand Master of the new order. The place of meeting was changed each week, in order not to attract the attention of the waiters who served the "Horses,"—cabalistic name of the conspirators,—and their secret had to be carefully guarded, for it was nothing less than a project for distributing among the members of the Red Horse the chief offices of State, the ministries and ambassadorships, the highest positions in arts and letters, the Académie Française and the Institut. These secret reunions ceased after a few months, for there was no more corn in the crib,—in other words, a majority of the "Horses" were unable to pay their dues.

Did these chimerical dreams serve to distract Balzac's thoughts from the realities, or did he believe that he possessed some occult means of dominating society? Perhaps it was something of both. His material situation had become worse. Werdet succumbed under the weight of his publications, dragging down his favourite author in his ruin. Balzac had hours of heavy depression; he went for a rest to Mme. Carraud's home at Frapésle, and after his return to Paris he wrote her in the following strain:

"I am horribly embarrassed for money. By tomorrow I may not have a care in the world, if the matters that I have in hand turn out well; but then again it is quite possible that I may perish. It is quite dramatic to be always hovering between life and death; it is the life of a corsair; but human endurance cannot keep it up forever."

He sought for new publishers; then, having passed through the crisis of humility, he straightened up once more, his courage was born again, and he undertook a very mysterious journey the goal of which he revealed to no one, aside from Commander Carraud, whom he had let into his secret. He announced only that if he succeeded it would mean a fortune for him and all his family. Balzac borrowed five hundred francs and left Paris in March, 1836, arriving on the 20th in Marseilles, and on the 26th in Ajaccio, where, his incognito having been betrayed by a former fellow student, he was royally entertained by the younger generation; and on April 1st he set out for Sardinia in a small sloop propelled by oars. What was the object of this journey? During a stay in Genoa in 1837 a merchant of that city had told him that whole mountains of slag existed near the silver mines which the Romans had worked in Sardinia. This information had set Balzac's spirit of deduction to working, and, assuming that the ancients were very ignorant in the art of reducing ores and had probably abandoned enormous quantities of silver in the slag, had asked his Genoese friend to send him some specimens to Paris.

Landing at Alghiero, he explored Sardinia, saw the mountains of slag and, returning to Genoa on the 22d, had the discomfiture of learning that his Genoese friend, instead of sending him the requested specimens, had adopted the idea himself and had obtained from the court of Turin the right to develop the project in conjunction with a firm in Marseilles which had assayed the ore. All Balzac's hopes of making his fortune once more crumbled to pieces; yet he refused to succumb, but, at the same time he wrote the bad news to Laure, announced that he had hit upon something better! Such was his unconquerable optimism. He returned by way of Milan, where he remained several weeks, attending to some business matters for the Visconti family, and, far from his "phrase-shop," he indulged in bitter reflections. At the age of thirty-nine his debts amounted to two hundred thousand francs, he had resorted to every means to clear himself, and, weary of so many useless efforts, he ceased to look forward to a day of liberation.

But he missed his routine of exhausting labour, he sighed for his table, his candles, his white paper; he wanted to get back to his feverish nights, his days of meditation, in his secluded and silent workroom where, better than anywhere else, all his heroic personages quivered into being, and he beheld all the various lives of his creation with a bitter, almost terrible joy. He returned to Paris during the first half of June, lamenting: "My head refuses to do any intellectual work; I feel that it is full of ideas, yet it is impossible to get them out; I am incapable of concentrating my thoughts, of compelling them to consider a subject from all its sides and then determine its development. I do not know when this imbecile condition will pass off, perhaps it is only that I am out of practice. When a workman has left his tools behind him for a time his hand becomes clumsy; it has, so to speak, undergone a divorce from them; he must needs begin again little by little to establish that fraternity due to habit and which binds the hand to the implement and the implement to the hand." But his discouragement did not last long, for he soon had his implement in hand again, with a stronger grip on it than ever.

It was in 1835 that Balzac conceived the idea of acquiring some land, situated between Sèvres and Ville-d'Avray, for the purpose of building a house. He wished in this way to give a guarantee to his mother, evade compulsory service in the National Guard, and become a landed proprietor. He had explored all the suburbs of Paris before deciding upon a hillside with a steep slope, as ill adapted to building as to cultivation. But, having definitely made his choice, he acquired sections from the adjacent holdings of three peasants, thus obtaining a lot forty square rods in extent, to which he naturally hoped to add later on. He calculated that he would not have to spend more than twenty-five thousand francs, which he could borrow,—in point of fact, the total cost came to more than ninety thousand,—and that the interest to be paid would not come to more than the rent he was then paying for his apartment. The first step was to surround his property with walls, and Balzac then christened it with the name of Les Jardies. He laughed with sheer contentment, foreseeing himself in his mind's eye already installed in his own abode, far from Paris, and yet near to it, and beyond the reach of importunate visitors and the curiosity of cheap journalism. Nevertheless Les Jardies cost him as much sarcasm and ridicule as his monstrous walking-stick set with turquoises. He had given his own plans to his architects, and he himself attentively superintended his contractors and masons. He experienced all the annoyances incident to construction, delays in the work, disputes with the workmen, the worry of raising money and meeting payments, and the impossibility of obtaining exactly what he wished. He was impatient to take possession of his own home, but the completion of it was delayed from month to month; it was to have been ready for occupancy by November 30, 1837, yet on his return from Sardinia in June 1838, it was not yet finished. But he was so eager to move in that in defiance of his physician's orders he installed himself in August, in the midst of all the confusion and with the workmen still all around him. It was a dreadful condition of things, the upturned ground, the empty chambers, the chill of new plaster, and an irritating sense of things not finished and pushed along in haste; but he was exultant, and distracted his own attention by admiring the beauty of the surrounding landscape.

How delightful it was to live at Les Jardies! It required not more than ten minutes to reach the heart of Paris, the Madeleine, and it cost but ten sous. The Rue des Batailles and the Rue Cassini were at the other end of the world, and you must needs spend a couple of francs for the shortest drive which wasted an hour,—such was the fashion in which Balzac dreamed! And he would gaze at his acre of ground, bare, ploughed-up clay, without a tree or a blade of grass, and he found no trouble in transforming it mentally into an eden of "plants, fragrance and shrubbery." He planned to fill it with twenty-year magnolias, sixteen-year lindens, twelve-year poplars, birches and grape vines which would yield him fine white grapes the very next year. And then he would earn thirty thousand francs and buy two more acres of land, which he would turn into an orchard and kitchen-garden.

The house which was the object of so many witticisms was a small three-storied structure, containing on the ground floor a dining-room and parlour, on the next a bed-chamber and dressing-room, and on the upper floor Balzac's working room. A balcony supported by brick pillars completely surrounded the second story, and the staircase—the famous staircase—ascended on the outside of the house. The whole was painted brick colour, excepting the corners, which had stone trimmings.

Behind the house itself, at a distance of some sixty feet, were the outhouses, including, on the ground floor, the kitchen, pantry, bathroom, stables, carriage-house and harness-room; on the floor above an apartment to let, and on the top floor the servants' quarters and a guest chamber. Furthermore, Balzac had a spring of water on his own grounds!

For months all Paris talked of the staircase at Les Jardies which Balzac, great architect that he was, had forgotten to put into the plans for his house. Under the caption, "Literary Indiscretions," the following humorous note appeared in La Caricature Provisoire;

"M. de Balzac, after having successively inhabited the four corners of the globe and the twelve wards of Paris, seems to have definitely transferred his domicile to the midst of an isolated plain in the outskirts of Ville-d'Avray; he occupies a house which he has had built there for his own particular accommodation by a direct descendant of the marvellous architect to whom the world owes the cathedral of Cologne. This house, in which no doors or windows are to be found, and which is entered through a square hole cut in the roof, is furnished throughout with an oriental luxury of which even the pashas themselves would be incapable of forming an idea. The great novelist's private study has a floor inlaid with young girl's teeth and hung with superb cashmere rugs that have been sent him by all the crowned heads of the universe. As to the furniture, the chairs, sofas and divans, they are one and all stuffed with women's hair, both blonde and brunette, sent to the author of La Grenadière by a number of women of thirty who did not hesitate a minute to despoil themselves of their most beautiful adornment,—a sacrifice all the more rare since they have passed the age at which the hair would grow again!"

Balzac removed to Les Jardies as soon as the walls of the dwelling had been raised and the floorings laid, and he lived there before there was a piece of furniture in any of the rooms, aside from the few indispensable things. Léon Gozlan has amusingly related the manner in which the novelist supplied their lack by an effort of imagination. He wrote on the walls with charcoal what he intended the interior decoration of his house to be: "Here a wainscoting of Parian marble; here a stylobate of cedar wood; here a ceiling painted by Eugène Delacroix; here an Aubusson tapestry; here a mantelpiece of cipolino marble; here doors on the Trianon model; here an inlaid floor of rare tropical woods."

Léon Gozlan says that "Balzac did not resent pleasantries at the expense of these imaginary furnishings," and he adds, "he laughed as heartily as I, if not more so, the day when I wrote, in characters larger than his own, on the wall of his bed-chamber, which was as empty as any of the others:

Balzac laughed, but Gozlan did not understand that he found more pleasure in desiring things than in actually possessing them, for in the former case he was limited only by the extent of his own desires, which were almost infinite.

Among the various speculative schemes which Balzac dreamed of, in connection with Les Jardies, and which were to make his fortune,—a dairy, vineyards which were to produce Malaga and Tokay wine, the creation of a village, etc.,—particular mention should be made of his plans for the cultivation of pineapples, which we have upon the authority of Théophile Gautier:

"Here was the project," he tells us, "a hundred thousand square feet of pineapples were to be planted in the grounds of Les Jardies, metamorphosed into hothouses which would require only a moderate amount of heating, thanks to the natural warmth of the situation. The pineapples were expected to sell at five francs each, instead of a louis (twenty francs), which was the ordinary price; in other words, five hundred thousand francs for the season's crop; from this amount a hundred thousand francs would have to be deducted for the cost of cultivation, the glass frames, and the coal; accordingly, there would remain a net profit of four hundred thousand, which would constitute a splendid income for the happy possessor,—'without having to turn out a page of copy,' he used to say. This was nothing; Balzac had a thousand projects of the same sort; but the beautiful thing about this one was that we went together to the Boulevard Montmartre to look for a shop in which to sell these pineapples that were not yet even planted. The shop was to be painted black, with gold trimmings, and there was to be a sign proclaiming in enormous letters: PINEAPPLES FROM LES JARDIES.

"However, he yielded to our advice not to hire the shop until the following year, in order to save needless expense."

When the first satisfaction of being a landed proprietor had passed, Balzac realised that he had added a new burden to those he already carried, and he confided to Mme. Carraud: "Yes, the folly is committed and it is complete! Don't talk of it to me; I must needs pay for it, and I am now spending my nights doing so!" Forty thousand francs had been added to his former debts, to say nothing of all sorts of trouble which Les Jardies was still destined to cost him.

In spite of his formidable powers of production, which had caused him to be called by Hippolyte Souverain "the most fertile of French novelists,"—a title, by the way, of which he was far from proud,—Honoré de Balzac could not succeed in freeing himself from debt. Nevertheless, between 1836 and 1839 he published: The Atheist's Mass, The Interdiction, The Old Maid, The Cabinet of Antiques, Facino Cane, Lost Illusions (1st part); The Superior Woman (later The Employees), The Cabinet of Antiques (2d part), The House of Nucingen, Splendours and Miseries of Courtezans (1st part), A Daughter of Eve, Beatrix, Lost Illusions (2d part), A Provincial Great Man in Paris, The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan, The Village Curé, and to these he added in 1840 Pierrette, Pierre Grassou, and A New Prince of Bohemia. His prices had risen, new illustrated editions of his earlier works had been issued, and he was receiving high rates for his short stories, not only from the magazines but from newspapers such as the Figaro, the Presse, the Siècle and the Constitutionnel; yet nothing could extinguish his debts, those debts which he had been so long carrying like a cross. "Why," said he, "I have been bowed down by this burden for fifteen years, it hampers the expansion of my life, it disturbs the action of my heart, it stifles my thoughts, it puts a blight on my existence, it embarrasses my movements, it checks my inspirations, it weighs upon my conscience, it interferes with everything, it has been a drag on my career, it has broken my back, it has made me an old man. My God, have I not paid dearly enough for my right to bask in the sunshine! All that calm future, that tranquillity of which I stand so much in need, all gambled away in a few hours and exposed to the mercy of Parisian caprice, which for the moment is in a censorious mood!"

Balzac now staked all his hopes upon his first play, Vautrin, which was about to be produced at the Porte Saint-Martin theatre. From the very outset of his literary career his thoughts had steadily turned to the drama, and his earliest attempt had been that ill-fated Cromwell, which had failed so ignominiously when read to his family. Yet this setback had not definitely turned him aside from the stage; and, while he rather despised the theatre as a means of literary expression, he had never ceased to consider it as the most rapid method of earning money and founding a fortune. All the time that he was writing his Human Comedy, one can feel that he was constantly pre-occupied with the composition of plays, of which he drafted the scenarios without ever elaborating them. In 1831 he invited Victor Ratier, editor of La Silhouette, to collaborate with him, specifying, however, "that it was more a question of establishing a literary porkshop than a reputation"; in 1832 he announced to his mother that he had "taken the step of writing two or three plays for stage production!" and he added, "This is the greatest misfortune which could happen to me; but necessity is stronger than I, and it is impossible to extricate myself in any other way. I shall try to find some one who will do me the service of signing them, so that I shall not need to compromise my own name." Thereafter he conceived successively a Marie Touchet, a tragedy in prose entitled Don Philip and Don Carlos, a farce comedy, Prudhomme Bigamist, a drama, The Courtiers, written in collaboration with Emmanuel Arago and Jules Sandeau, and a high-class comedy, The Grande Mademoiselle, also in collaboration with Sandeau. Then, in 1836, he reverted to Marie Touchet, and composed La Gina, a drama in three acts, and Richard the Sponge-Hearted. Finally, in 1839, he wrote for the Renaissance Theatre The School of Married Life, with the obscure aid of Lassailly, a five-act play for which he was offered an award of six thousand francs, and which he himself produced in print. But it was never performed, in spite of many promises.

This first unsuccessful attempt at stage production discouraged him at first, yet he never gave up his determination to succeed. He prepared a second play, intending to ask Théophile Gautier to collaborate with him; this second play was Vautrin.

The first performance of Vautrin took place March 14, 1840. Balzac expected that this play would bring him in at least six thousand francs. Tickets had been greatly in demand, and speculators had so completely cornered them that the audience, composed largely of the author's friends, could not obtain them at the box office. It was a tumultuous evening, and one would have to go back to the great opening nights of Victor Hugo in order to find a parallel case of hostile demonstrations. Frédérik Lemaître, who played the rôle of Jacques Collin, had conceived the idea of making himself up to resemble Louis Philippe. The King of France, far from being pleased at seeing himself masquerading as a bandit, suppressed the play, which consequently had only the one performance. It was a disaster, but Balzac bore up valiantly under it. Léon Gozlin, who called upon him at Les Jardies on the very day when the royal interdiction reached him, relates that he talked of nothing else but his plans for improving his property. Balzac's friends, headed by Victor Hugo, tried to use their influence with the government officials, but the latter were powerless to do otherwise than to confirm the order of Louis Philippe; the royal edict had been imperative. The government offered to pay Balzac an indemnity, but he proudly refused.

A few months prior to the production of Vautrin, Balzac, then at the height of his financial difficulties and literary labours, had nevertheless courageously undertaken the defense of a man accused of murder whom he believed to be innocent. This act was in accordance with his conception of his duty as a citizen, and it bore witness to his generosity and sense of justice. The case in question was that of a certain notary, Peytel by name, of Belley, who was accused of the premeditated murder of his wife and man-servant. Balzac had had a slight acquaintance with him in 1831, at the time when Peytel was part owner of the Voleur, to which Balzac contributed. This acquaintance had sufficed him to judge of the man's character and to conclude that he was incapable of the double crime with which he was charged. Regardless of his own most pressing interests, Balzac, accompanied by Gavarni, set out for Bourg, where the trial and sentence of death had already taken place. He saw the condemned man, and the conversations which they had together still further strengthened his opinion. This opinion he set forth in a Comment on the Peytel Case, which the Siècle published in its issues of September 15-17, 1839, and with a compelling force of argument and a fervent eloquence he demonstrated the innocence of the unfortunate notary. Nevertheless, the Court of Cassation found no reason for granting a new trial, and Peytel was executed at Bourg, October 28, 1839. This was a bitter blow to Balzac, who had believed that he could save him. Furthermore, his efforts and investigations had cost him ten thousand francs!

This was a cruel loss, both in time and in money. His novels were not bringing him in a hundredth part of what he estimated that he ought to be earning, in view of his extraordinary rate of production. He placed the blame upon the unauthorised Belgian reprints, which, according to his calculations, had robbed him of more than a million francs. Literary works were not at that time properly protected, and it was the province of the Society of Men of Letters to demand from the Government an effective defense against the "hideous piracy" of foreign countries. Balzac was admitted to the Society in 1839,—although with no small difficulty, for he had many enemies, and received only fifty-three votes, while forty-five were necessary for election,—but it was not long before he had made his influence felt and had been chosen as a member of the committee. Léon Gozlan, who served with him, acknowledged his influence. "Balzac," he wrote, "brought to the Society a profound, almost diabolical knowledge of the chronic wretchedness of the profession; a rare and unequalled ability to deal with the aristocrats of the publishing world; an unconquerable desire to limit their depredations, which he had brooded over on the Mount Sinai of a long personal experience; and, above all else, an admirable conviction of the inherent dignity of the man of letters."

It was Balzac's ambition to form a sort of author's league, under the direction of "literary marshals," of whom he should be the first, and including in its membership all the widely scattered men of letters, banded together in defense of their material and moral interests. He himself set an example by requesting the support of the Society against a little sheet entitled Les Écoles, which had libelled him in a cartoon in which he was represented in prison for debt, wearing his monkish robe and surrounded by gay company. The cartoon bore the following legend: "The Reverend Father Séraphitus Mysticus Goriot, of the regular order of the Friars of Clichy, at last taken in by those who have so long been taken in by him." This was in September, 1839, and on the 22d of the following October Balzac appeared as the representative of the Society of Men of Letters before the trial court of Rouen, in an action which it had begun against the Mémorial de Rouen, for having reprinted certain published matter without permission. But he did not limit himself to a struggle from day to day, to discussions in committee meetings, to appeals to the legislature,—his ambition was to become himself the law-maker for the writers. In May, 1840, two months after the disastrous failure of Vautrin, he offered to the consideration of the Society of Men of Letters a Literary Code, divided into titles, paragraphs, and articles, in which he laid down the principles from which to formulate practical rules for the protection of the interests of authors, and for the greater glory of French literature.

Having been appointed a member of the Committee of Official Relations, a committee which had been created at his suggestion for the purpose of seeing that men of letters should exercise a just influence over the government, Balzac drew up in 1841, some highly important Notes to be submitted to Messieurs the Deputies constituting the Committee on the Law of literary Property. But that same year, after having worked upon a Manifesto which the Committee was to present to the ruling powers, he handed in his resignation from the Society, on the 5th of October, and it was found impossible to make him reconsider his decision. It may be that he had received some slight which he could not forgive, or perhaps he had decided that it was to his interest to retain in his own name the right to authorise the republication of his works.

At this period he had attained that supremacy of which he had formerly dreamed in his humble mansarde chamber in the Rue Lesdiguières, and he wished to have it crowned by some sort of official recognition. He made up his mind to present himself for election to the Académie Française, in December, 1839, but withdrew in favour of the candidacy of Victor Hugo, notwithstanding that the latter begged him, in a dignified and gracious message, not to do so.

An intercourse which, without being especially cordial, was fairly frequent had been established between these two great writers as a result of their joint labours on the committee of the Society of Men of Letters. During the month of July, 1839, Victor Hugo breakfasted with Balzac at Les Jardies, in company with Gozlan, for the purpose of discussing the great project of the Manifesto. Gozlan, who formed the third member of this triangular party, has left the following delectable account of the interview:

"Balzac was picturesquely clad in rags; his trousers, destitute of suspenders, parted company with his ample fancy waistcoat; his downtrodden shoes parted company with his trousers; his necktie formed a flaring bow, the points of which nearly reached his ears, and his beard showed a vigorous four days' growth. As for Victor Hugo, he wore a gray hat of a very dubious shade, a faded blue coat with gilt buttons resembling a casserole in colour and shape, a much frayed black cravat, and, as a finishing touch, a pair of green spectacles that would have delighted the heart of the head clerk of a county sheriff, enemy of solar radiation!"

They made the circuit of the property, and Victor Hugo remained politely cold before the dithyrambic praises which Balzac lavished on his garden. He smiled only once, and that was at sight of a walnut tree, the only tree that the owner of Les Jardies had acquired from the community.

Victor Hugo had revealed to him the enormous profits that he drew from his dramatic writings, and it is easy to believe that Balzac's persistent efforts to have a play produced were due to the momentary glimpse of a steady stream of wealth that was thus flashed before his dazzled eyes. After the catastrophe of Vautrin, he still pursued his dramatic ambitions with Pamela Giraud and Mercadet, but failed to find any theatre that would consent to produce them. What was worse, the year 1840 was, beyond all others, a frightful one for Balzac. He faced his creditors like a stag at bay; and all the while he found the burden of Les Jardies becoming constantly heavier. The walls surrounding the property had slipped on their clay foundation and broken down, while Balzac himself had sustained a serious fall on the steep slopes of his garden, and had consequently lost more than a month's work. Furthermore, he underwent imprisonment at Sèvres for having refused to take his turn at standing guard over his neighbours' vineyards.

In his distress he thought seriously of expatriating himself and setting out for Brazil; and, before coming to a final decision, he awaited only the success or failure of a publishing venture such as he had already undertaken in vain. In the month of July, 1840, he started the Revue Parisienne, of which he was the sole editor, and through which he proclaimed a dictatorial authority over the arts and letters, society and the government. He had to abandon it after the third number.

Balzac remained in France, but he was obliged to quit Les Jardies. His creditors looked upon this property as their legitimate prey, and neither ruse nor sacrifice could any longer keep it from them. He first made a fictitious sale of it to his architect, and then a real one, on the advice of his lawyer. It had cost him more than ninety thousand francs, and he got back only seventeen thousand five hundred. But he had lived there through some beautiful dreams and great hopes.