Balzac Part 6

Werdet, when he was introduced to the writer of the _Physiology of Marriage_, had already tried his luck at publishing, but had been compelled to abandon the master's position and to enter as an employee into the house of a Madame Bechet, who was engaged in the same line of business. Having read and liked some of Balzac's earlier works, he persuaded the firm to entrust him with the task of negotiating a purchase of the exclusive rights of the novelist's _Studies of Manners and Morals in the Nineteenth Century_. The negotiation was carried through in 1832, and a sum of thirty-six thousand francs was paid to Balzac. This was the writer's real beginning of money-making. Twelve months after, Werdet resolved to start once more on his own account.

He had only a few thousand francs capital. His idea was to risk them in buying one of Balzac's books; and then, if successful, gradually to acquire a publishing monopoly in the great man's productions.

Distrusting his own powers of persuasion, he enlisted the good offices of Barbier, the late partner of the Rue des Marais printing-house, who was a _persona grata_ with the novelist. Together, they went to the Rue Ca.s.sini; and Barbier set forth Werdet's desire.

"Very good," replied the great man. "But you are aware, Monsieur, that those who now publish my works require large capital, since I often need considerable advances."

Proudly, young Werdet brought out his six notes of five hundred francs each, and spread them on the table.

"There is all my fortune," he said. "You can have it for any book you please to write for me."

At the sight of them Balzac burst out laughing.

"How can you imagine, Monsieur, that I--I--de Balzac! who sold my _Studies of Manners and Morals_ not long ago to Madame Bechet for thirty-six thousand francs--I, whose collaboration to the _Revue de Paris_ is ordinarily remunerated by Buloz at five hundred francs per sheet, should forget myself to the point of handing you a novel from my pen for a thousand crowns? You cannot have reflected on your offer, Monsieur; and I should be ent.i.tled to look upon your step as unbecoming in the highest degree, were it not that your frankness in a measure justifies you."

Barbier tried to plead for his friend, and mentioned that, in consideration of Werdet's share in the transaction with Madame Bechet, a second edition of the _Country Doctor_ might be granted him for the three thousand francs. But Balzac, retorting that whatever service had been rendered was not to himself but by himself, dismissed his visitors with the words:

"We have spent an hour, gentlemen, in useless talk. You have made me lose two hundred francs. For me, time is money. I must work. Good-day."

They left, and Barbier, to comfort his friend, prophesied that, in spite of this reception, Balzac would enter into _pourparlers_ with him, and that Werdet had only to wait, and news would be received from the Rue Ca.s.sini shortly. He was not mistaken. Three days elapsed and then Werdet had the following note sent him:--

"SIR,--You called upon me the other day when my head was preoccupied with some writing that I wanted to finish, and I consequently did not very well comprehend what was your drift. To-day, my head is freer. Do me the pleasure to call on me at four o'clock, and we can talk the matter over."

Werdet waited nearly a week before he paid the requested visit. In quite another tone, the novelist discussed the proposed scheme, promised to use his influence on the young publisher's behalf, and gave him the _Country Doctor_ for the price offered.

Thenceforward, a familiar guest in the dwelling of the Rue Ca.s.sini, Werdet described it in detail, when composing his _Portrait Intime_.

It was part of a two-storied _pavilion_ (as the French call a moderate-sized house) standing to the left in a courtyard and garden, with another similar building on the right. From the ground-floor a flight of steps led up to a gla.s.s-covered gallery joining the two buildings and serving as an antechamber to each. Its sides were hung in white and blue-striped glazed calico; and a long, blue-upholstered divan, a blue and brown carpet, and some fine china vases filled with flowers, adorned it. From the gallery the visitor proceeded into a pretty drawing-room, fifteen feet square, lighted on the east by a small cas.e.m.e.nt that looked over the yard of a neighbouring house.

Opposite the drawing-room door was a black marble mantelpiece.

The _salon_ gave access to the bedroom and the dining-room, the latter being connected with the kitchen underneath by a narrow staircase. A secret door in the _salon_ opened into the bathroom with its walls of white stucco, its bath of white marble, and its red, opaque window-panes diffusing a rose-coloured tint through the air. Two easy-chairs in red morocco stood near the bath.

The bedroom, having two windows, one towards the south and the observatory, the other overlooking a garden of flowers and trees, was very bright and cheery. The furniture, with its shades of white, pink, and gold, was rich and handsome. A secret door existed also in this chamber, hidden behind muslin hangings; it led down the same narrow staircase already mentioned to the kitchen, and thence out into the yard. Nanon, Balzac's cook, less discreet than Auguste, the valet-de-chambre, had tales to tell Werdet about certain lady visitors who arrived by means of this private staircase into the daintily arranged bedroom.

The study, of oblong shape, about eighteen feet by twelve, had likewise two windows affording a view only over the yard of the next house, which, being lofty, made the room dark, even in the sunniest weather. Here the furniture was simple, the princ.i.p.al piece being an exceedingly fine ebony bookcase, with mirrored panels. It contained a large collection of rare books, all bound in red morocco and set off with the escutcheon of the d'Entragues family. Among them were nearly all the authors who had written on mysticism, occult science, and religion. Opposite the bookcase, between the windows, was a carved ebony cabinet filled with red morocco box-cases, and on the top of the cabinet stood a plaster statuette representing Napoleon I. Across the sword-sheath was stuck a tiny paper with these words written by the novelist: "What he could not achieve with the sword I will accomplish with the pen. Honore de Balzac."

On the mantelpiece decorated with a mirror, there was an alarum in unpolished bronze, together with two vases in brown porcelain. And on either side of the mirror hung all sorts of woman's trifles; here, a crumpled glove, there a small satin shoe; and, further, a little rusty iron key. Questioned as to the significance of this last article, the owner called it his talisman. There was also a diminutive framed picture exhibiting beneath the gla.s.s a fragment of brown silk, with an arrow-pierced heart embroidered on it, and the English words: _An Unknown Friend_. In front of a modest writing-table covered with green baize was a large Voltaire arm-chair upholstered in red morocco; and about the room were a few other ebony chairs covered in brown cloth.

Within his sanctum Balzac worked clad in a white Dominican gown with hood, the summer material being dimity and cashmere; he was shod with embroidered slippers, and his waist was girt with a rich Venetian-gold chain, on which were suspended a paper-knife, a pair of scissors, and a gold penknife, all of them beautifully carved. Whatever the season, thick window-curtains shut out the rays of light that might have penetrated into the study, which was illuminated only by two moderate-sized candelabra of unpolished bronze, each holding a couple of continually burning candles.

The installation of these various household necessaries and luxuries was progressive and was a.s.sociated closely with the heyday period of his celebrity. It was during 1833 that the metamorphosis was mainly effected, for Werdet relates that, in the month of November, he found Balzac, one afternoon, superintending the laying down of some rich Aubusson carpets in his house. Money must have been plentiful just then. Learning accidentally on this occasion that his publisher had no carpet in his drawing-room, the novelist surprised him the same evening by sending some men with one that he had bought for him. This present Werdet suitably acknowledged a short time after; and, throughout the period of their intimacy, there were a good few compliments of the kind exchanged, which appear to have cost the man of business dearer than the man of letters.

To tell the truth, Balzac had a knack of presuming that something he intended doing was already done. One notorious example was the white horse he a.s.serted, in presence of a number of guests a.s.sembled in Madame de Girardin's drawing-room, had been given by him to Jules Sandeau. The animal in question, he said, he had bought from a well-known dealer; the celebrated trainer Baucher had tested it and declared it to be the most perfect animal ever ridden. For nearly half-an-hour the speaker expatiated on the points of this wonderful steed, and thoroughly convinced his audience of the gift having been already bestowed. A few evenings later, Jules Sandeau met Balzac at the same house, and the subject was of course reverted to by their mutual friends. As the novelist asked him whether he liked the horse, Jules, not to be outvied, answered with an enumeration of its qualities. But he never saw the animal for all that.

Another instance equally amusing was furnished at a dinner given in honour of Balzac by Henri de Latouche, who had not then broken with him. At dessert, the host sketched the plan of a novel he intended to write, and Balzac, who had been drinking champagne, warmly applauded; "The thing," he said, "is capital. Even summarily related, it is charming. What will it be when the talent, style, and wit of the author have enhanced it!" Next evening, at Madame de Girardin's, he reproduced, with his native fire and power of description, the narration he had heard the night before--reproduced it as his own --persuaded it was his own. Every one was enthusiastic, and complimented him. But the matter was bruited abroad. Latouche recognized in Balzac's proposed new novel the creation he had himself unfolded; and wrote a sharp protest which, for once, forced its recipient to distinguish fact from fiction, and what was his share, what another's, in the output of ideas. Yet he might be excused for some of his frequent fits of forgetfulness, since he sowed his own conceptions and discoveries broadcast, and often encountered them again in the possession of lesser minds who had utilized them before he could put them into execution.

In the year of 1833, the novelist's correspondence alludes to several books which, like others previously spoken of, were never published, and probably never written. Among these are _The Privilege_, _The History of a Fortunate Idea_, and the _Catholic Priest_. Meanwhile, he did add considerably to his _Droll Tales_, the first series of which appeared in the same twelve months as _Eugenie Grandet_. These stories --in the style of Boccaccio, and of some of Chaucer's writing--broad, racy, and somewhat licentious, albeit containing nothing radically obscene, were meant to ill.u.s.trate the history of the French language and French manners from olden to modern days. Only part of the project was realized. They are told with wit and humour that are nowhere present to the same degree in the rest of the novelist's work, and in their colouring, as Taine justly remarks, recall Jordaens' painting with its vivid carnation tints. At this time the author was occupied with _Bertha Repentant_ and the _Succubus_, which, however, were published only three years subsequently.

CHAPTER VI

LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER," 1833, 1834

If Balzac's intimates, careful of his future, had besought him to jot down in a diary the detailed doings of his every-day life, with a confession of his thoughts, feelings, and opinions, in fine an unmasking of himself, he would surely have urged the material impossibility of his fulfilling such a task, over and above the labours of Hercules to which his ambition and his necessities bound him. And yet he performed the miracle unsolicited.

From the day when he quitted Neufchatel to the day when he arrived at Wierzchownia, on his crowning visit in 1848, he never ceased chronicling, in a virtually uninterrupted series of letters to Madame Hanska, closely following each other during most of this long period, a faithful account of his existence--exception made for its love episodes--which, having fortunately been preserved, const.i.tutes an almost complete autobiography of his mature years. When the end of the correspondence shall have been given to the public, three volumes, at least, will have been taken up with the record--a record which taxed his time and strength, indeed overtaxed them, causing him to encroach unduly on his already too short hours of sleep. The motive must have been a powerful one that could induce him to make so large a sacrifice. Whether it was love alone, as he protested again and again, or love mixed with gratified pride, or both joined to the hope of enjoying the vast fortune that loomed through the mists of the far-off Ukraine, the phenomenon remains the same. Certainly some great force was behind the pen that untiringly wrote in every vein and mood these astonishing _Letters to the Stranger_.

In those up to the year 1834 that were, properly speaking, private, the tone rises to a pitch of lover-pa.s.sion that could hardly fail to alarm, even whilst they flattered the one to whom his devotion was addressed. Although Balzac's brief sojourns in Madame Hanska's vicinity had resulted in no breach of the marriage law, there was too much implied in his a.s.sumption of their betrothal to please the husband, if any of these lover's oaths should fall under his notice.

And this was what just did happen before many months had gone by. In consequence of some accident which is not explained, the Count had cognizance of two epistles that reached his wife while both were staying at Vienna; and, for some time, it seemed as though the intercourse would be definitely severed. A humble apology was sent to the Count, the letters being pa.s.sed off as a joke; and the interpretation was, fortunately for Balzac, accepted. Madame Hanska was offended as well as her husband, or, at any rate, she affected to be. It appears some negligence had been committed by the novelist in forwarding the incriminating epistles. However, being cleared in her husband's eyes, she yielded her forgiveness.

Balzac's policy, after this mishap, was to keep on the best terms possible with Monsieur Hanski, who, to use the Frenchman's English expression, suffered from chronic blue devils. After leaving his new friends at Geneva, the novelist procured the Count an autograph letter from Rossini, this great composer being a favourite at Wierzchownia.

To his new lady-love he sent an effusion of his own in verse, having small poetic merit, but pretty sentiment.

During the Geneva intercourse, he did his best to familiarize Eve with all the names and characters of the people he knew, since his interests were to be hers, or, at any rate, so he flattered himself.

She learnt to distinguish the people who were for him from those who were against him. Of these latter there were a goodly number, some made enemies by his own fault, through over-susceptibility or unconscious arrogance. Both causes were responsible for the quarrel occurring about this time between him and Emile de Girardin, which was never entirely healed, in spite of the persevering efforts of Emile's wife, better known as Madame Delphine Gay. "I have bidden good-bye to the Gays' molehill," he informed Madame Hanska. It was pretty much the same with his estrangement from the Duke de Fitz-James, which, however, was followed by a speedy reconciliation, for the Duke was offering, a few months later, to support him again in a political election. The unsatisfactory state of his health, and some family troubles, decided him to defer his candidature to the end of the decade, by which date he hoped to have written two works--_The Tragedy of Philippe II._ and _The History of the Succession of the Marquis of Carrabas_--which should implant his conception of absolute monarchic power so strongly in the minds of his fellow-citizens that they would be glad to send him to Parliament as their representative. Other political articles and pamphlets of his, he a.s.serted, would enable him by 1839 to dominate European questions.

Werdet has a great deal to say about his idol's over-weening exaction of homage, leading him to be himself guilty of acts of rudeness towards others, thus alienating their sympathies. The publisher relates one scene that he witnessed at the offices of William Duckett, proprietor of the _Dictionary of Conversation and Reading_. The office door was suddenly opened and Balzac stalked in with his hat on his head. "Is Duckett in?" he curtly asked, addressing in common the chief editor, his sub, and an attendant. There was a conspiracy of silence.

Evidently, this was not the novelist's first visit, and his style was known. Again the question was put in the same language and manner, and again no one replied. Advancing now a step, and speaking to the chief editor, he repeated his question for a third time. Monglave, who was an irritable gentleman, being accosted personally, answered briefly: "Put your question to the sub-editor." There was a wheel-about, and another peremptory inquiry, to which the sub, imitating his chief, replied with "Ask the attendant." At present boiling with rage, Balzac turned to the porter and thundered: "Is Duckett in?" "Monsieur Balzac," returned the attendant, "these gentlemen have forbidden me to tell you." Threatening to report the affair to Duckett, the novelist withdrew, pursued by the mocking laughter of the chief editor and the sub; but, on second thoughts, he deemed it more prudent to let the matter drop.

Another example of this peculiar a.s.sumption of superiority occurred not long after at a dinner given by Werdet in honour of a young author, Jules Bergounioux, whose novels were being much read. Among the guests were Gustave Planche, Jules Sandeau, and Balzac. During the meal the conversation, after many a.s.saults of wit and mirth, fell on the necessity of defending writers against the piracy and mutilation of their books in foreign countries, more especially in Belgium. All expressed their opinion energetically, young Bergounioux like the rest, he happening to cla.s.s himself with his fellows in the words--_we men of letters_. At the conclusion of his little speech, Balzac uttered a guffaw: "You, sir, a man of letters! What pretension! What presumption! You! compare yourself to us! Really, sir, you forget that you have the honour to be sitting here with the marshals of modern literature."

This exhibition and others similar were natural to the man. He could not help them. It was impossible for him not to be continually proclaiming his own greatness. "Don't tax me with littleness," he said in one of his letters to Delphine Gay, in which he justified his breaking with her husband. "I think myself too great to be offended by any one."

The domestic troubles alluded to above, which were worrying Balzac in 1834, had partly to do with his brother Henry, a sort of ne'er-do-well, who had been out to the Indies and had returned with an undesirable wife, and prospects--or rather the lack of them--that made him a burden to the other members of the family. Madame Balzac, too, was unwell at Chantilly; and her illnesses always affected Honore, who, at such moments, reproached himself for not being able to do more on her behalf. Not that his year's budget was a poor one. The seventy thousand francs at which he estimated his probable earnings for the twelvemonth were not on this occasion so very much beyond the truth, if his author's percentages were included. Werdet--the ill.u.s.trious Werdet, who, he said, somewhat resembled the _Ill.u.s.trious Gaudissart_ --bought an edition of his philosophic novels for fifteen thousand francs; and, besides two princ.i.p.al books to be mentioned further on, both of which appeared before the close of the year, there were parts of _Seraphita_ and _The Cabinet of Antiques_ which the _Revue de Paris_ was publishing as serials. His notorious quarrel and lawsuit with this Review was yet to come. But there was storm in the air even now. _Seraphita_, the subject inspired by Madame Hanska and dedicated to her, was but little to the taste of Buloz the editor; and he declared to Balzac, who was making him wait for copy, that it was hardly worth while taking so long and making so much fuss over a novel which neither the public nor he, the editor, could understand. Happily the dear Werdet was at hand to arrange the difficulty. Though in the same case as Buloz, and failing altogether to comprehend the subject or its treatment, he took over _Seraphita_ in 1835 and published it.

Next to politics, as a means of gaining name and fame more quickly, Balzac esteemed play-writing. The esteem was purely commercial. In his heart of hearts he rather despised this species of composition, entertaining the notion that it was something to be done quickly, if at all, and utilizable to please the groundlings. Yet, because he saw that there was money in it, he turned his hand to it, time after time, and, for long, had to abandon it as constantly. In 1834 he formed a partnership with Jules Sandeau and Emmanuel Arago, with the idea of risking less in case of failure. In addition to the tragedy already spoken of, he tried two others--_The Courtiers_ and _Don Philip and Don Charles_, the latter modelled on Schiller's _Don Carlos_. The _Grande Mademoiselle_ was a comic history of Lauzun; and his _Prudhomme, Bigamist_, was a farce, in which a dummy placed in a bed seemed to him capable, with a night's working on it, of bringing down the house. Vaguely he felt, and vaguely he confessed to his sister, what he had seen and confessed thirteen years earlier, that the drama was not his forte. But, anch.o.r.ed in the conviction that he ought finally to succeed in everything he undertook, he returned to the attempt with magnificent pluck and perseverance.

His colleague for the nonce, Sandeau, he considered to be a protege of his; and used him a while as a kind of secretary. In this year especially he showed much solicitude about him. There was nothing to excite his jealousy in the author of _Sacs et Parchemins_, who was not elected to the Academy until nearly the end of the decade in which Balzac died. On the contrary, his pity was aroused by Sandeau's precarious position and by the recent separation between Madame Dudevant and this first of her lovers, who did his best to commit suicide by swallowing a dose of acetate of morphia. Luckily the dose was so large that Sandeau's stomach refused to digest it. George Sand herself Balzac admired but did not care for at this time. He would talk to her amiably when he met her at the Opera; but, if she invited him to dinner, he invented an excuse, if possible, for not going.

"Don't speak to me," he would say, "of this writer of the neuter gender. Nature ought to have given her more breeches and less style."

His opinion, however, did not prevent him, in 1842, from accepting her help. An article had come out in her _Revue Independante_, without her knowledge, attacking him violently. She wrote to apologize; and Balzac called on her, to explain, as he informed Madame Hanska, how injustice serves the cause of talent. She told him then that she should like to write a thorough study of him and his books; and he made as though he would dissuade her, saying that she would only get herself in bad odour with his critics. Still she persisted, and he accordingly asked her to compose a preface for an ensuing publication of his whole works, the preface to be a defence of him against those who were his enemies. Whether this notice was written before the novelist's death is uncertain. At any rate, it was not printed until 1875, when it appeared in her volume _Autour de la Table_.

It was difficult for Balzac to be fair towards those men of letters among his contemporaries who excelled in his own domain; yet his judgment, when unwarped, was fine, keen, and, in many instances, endowed with prophetic sight. For instance, in placing Alfred de Musset as a poet above Victor Hugo or Lamartine, he daringly contradicted the opinions of his own day, and antic.i.p.ated a criticism which is at present becoming respectable if not fashionable. On the other hand, his estimate of _Volupte_, Sainte-Beuve's just then published novel, which he was soon to imitate and recreate in his _Lily in the Valley_, was manifestly prejudiced. He called it a book badly written in most of its parts, weak, loosely constructed, diffuse, in which there were some good things, in short a puritanical book, the chief character of it, Madame Couaen not being woman enough.

His opinion, which he imparted to Madame Hanska, he apparently took no trouble to conceal, for Sainte-Beuve was evidently aware of it when he treated Balzac very sharply in an article of this same year of 1834.

From that date, the celebrated lecturer looked with coldness and disfavour on the novelist, and even in his final p.r.o.nouncement of the _Causeries du Lundi_, shortly after Balzac's death, he meted out but faint praise.

Something has been said in a previous chapter of the novelist's belief in certain occult powers of the mind, with which the newly discovered action of magnetism seemed to him to be connected. At first, his ideas on the subject were a good deal mixed. When, in 1832, a terrible epidemic of cholera was spreading its ravages, he wrote to Doctor Chapelain, suggesting that somnambulism--he would have called it hypnotism to-day--should be employed to seek out the causes of the malady, and a test applied to prove whether its virtues were real or chimerical. In 1834, he had come to pin his faith to the healing powers of magnetism. "When you or Monsieur Hanski or Anna are ill," he wrote to Eve, "let me know. Don't laugh at me. At Issoudun, facts recently demonstrated to me that I possess very large magnetic potency, and that, either through a somnambulist" (he meant a hypnotist) "or through myself, I can cure persons dear to me." To all his friends he reiterated the same advice--magnetic treatment, which he declared his mother capable of exercising as well as himself.

Madame Balzac's initiation into the science was due to the Prince of Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingfurst, Bishop of Sardica, who, in his several visits to Paris between 1821 and 1829, wrought wonderful cures by the simple imposition of hands. As the lady used to suffer from a swelling in the bowels whenever she ate raw fruit, the Bishop, hearing of it, came one day to see her, and applied his method, which cured her. Balzac, being a witness of the miracle, became an ardent investigator in this new branch--or rather old branch revived--of therapeutics. Thenceforward, his predilection for theories of the occult went hand in hand with his equally strong taste for the a.n.a.lytic observation of visible phenomena; and not infrequently he indulged in their simultaneous literary expression. The composing of _Seraphita_ was carried on at the same time as his _Search for the Absolute_ and _Pere Goriot_.

Both of these two novels were finished and published in 1834. In the _Search for the Absolute_, we have Balthazar Claes, a man of wealth and leisure, living in the ancient town of Douai, and married to a wife who adores him and who has borne him children. Claes' hobby is scientific research; his aim, the discovery of the origin of things which he believes can be given him by his crucible. In his family mansion, of antique Flemish style, which is admirably described by the novelist at great length, he pursues his tireless experiments; and, with less justification than Bernard Palissy, encroaches by degrees on the capital of his fortune, which melts away in his furnace and alembics. During the first period of his essays, his wife tries to have confidence in his final success, herself studies all sorts of learned treatises, in order to be able to converse with him suitably and to encourage him in his work; but, at last, unable to delude her own mind any longer, she weeps with her children over the approaching destruction of their home, and the grief wears her out and kills her.

Luckily the daughter, Marguerite, is made of sterner stuff than her mother. And, with her brother, she toils to pay her father's debts and to keep the home together. At the end, Claes himself dies, still absorbed in his chimera, and his last words are an endeavour to formulate the marvellous revelation which his disordered brain persuades him he has now received.

"'Eureka!' he cried with a shrill voice, and fell back on his bed with a thud. In pa.s.sing away, he uttered a frightful groan, and his convulsed eyes, until the doctors closed them, spoke his regret not to have been able to bequeath to science the key of a mystery whose veil had been tardily torn aside under the gaunt fingers of Death."

The _Search for the Absolute_ may be cla.s.sed with _Eugenie Grandet_ in the category of the novelist's best creations. Though Claes is, as much as Grandet, and perhaps more, an abnormal being, his sacrifice of every duty of life to the pursuit of the irrealizable is common enough in humanity. By reason of the novelist's intense delineation, his figure shows out in monstrous proportions; but these are skilfully relieved by the happier fates of the children. The lengthy descriptions of the opening chapter he defended against his sister Laure's strictures, a.s.serting that they had ramifications with the subject which escaped her. His presentment, too, of Marguerite he said was not forced, as she thought. Marguerite was a Flemish woman, and Flemish women followed one idea out and, with phlegm, went unswervingly towards their goal. The labour the book had cost him he owned to Madame Hanska. Two members of the Academy of Sciences taught him chemistry, so that he might be exact in his representation of Claes' experiments; and he read Berzelius into the bargain. Moreover, he had revised and modified the proofs of the novel no fewer than a dozen times.

As Werdet tells, the real work of composition, with Balzac, hardly commenced until he had a set of galley proofs. What he sent first to the printer, scribbled with his crow's-quill, was a mere sketch; and the sketch itself was a sort of Chinese puzzle, largely composed of scratched-out and interpolated sentences; pa.s.sages and chapters being moved about in a curious _cha.s.se-croise_, which the type-setters deciphered and arranged as they best could. Margins and inter-columnal s.p.a.ces they found covered with interpolations; a long trailing line indicated the way here and the way there to the destination of the inserted pa.s.sages. A cobweb was regular in comparison to the task which the printers had to tackle in the hope of finding beginning, middle, and end. In the various presses where his books were set up, the employees would never work longer than an hour on end at his ma.n.u.script. And the indemnity he had to pay for corrections reached sometimes the figure of forty francs per sixteen pages. Numerous were the difficulties caused on this score with publishers, editors, and printers. Balzac justified himself by quoting the examples of Chateaubriand, Ingres, and Meyerbeer in their various arts. To Buloz, of the _Revue de Paris_, who expostulated, he impatiently replied: "I will give up fifty francs per sheet to have my hands free. So say no more about the matter." It is true that Buloz paid him 250 francs per sheet for his contributions.

Indeed, the novelist's own method of work was a reversal of the natural alternation of regular periods of activity and repose. He not only, as he told all his correspondents with wearisome iteration, burned the midnight oil, but would keep up these eighteen or twenty hours' daily labour for weeks altogether, until some novel that he was engaged on was finished. During these spells of composing he would see no one, read no letters, but write on and on, eating sparingly, sipping his coffee, and refreshing his jaded anatomy by taking a bath, in which he would lie for a whole hour, plunged in meditation. After his voluntary seclusions, he suddenly reappeared in his usual haunts, active and feverish as ever, note-book ready to hand, in which he jotted down his thoughts, discoveries, and observations for future use. On its pages were primitively outlined the features of most of the women of his fiction.