Balzac Part 8

"No, but it is here"--tapping his forehead--"I have only to write it.

In an hour it will be done."

"With the corrections?" queried Karr slily.

"Yes, with the corrections."

"Ah! well, prove that to us; and we'll all go on dry bread and water until a statue is raised to you. I am hungry."

Although Balzac's colleagues had a real respect and admiration for his talent, they chaffed him unmercifully for his vanity. One Sat.u.r.day, Alphonse Karr, as a joke, crowned him with flowers; and Balzac, in all good faith, complacently accepted the honour. Around him, the laughter broke out fast and furious; and, at length, he joined in with volleys that shook the room, while his face waxed purple beneath his explosions. In his _Guepes_, Alphonse Karr subsequently recalled this improvized coronation of the novelist.

Edited and composed in such desultory fas.h.i.+on, the _Chronicle's_ prosperity was short-lived, in spite of the l.u.s.tre it temporarily acquired from Balzac's name, and the publication in it of some of his fiction. Before long its financial position was so bad that the chief editor, as a forlorn hope, tried to induce a young Russian n.o.bleman, who was an eager reader of his books, to enter the concern with a large amount of fresh capital. To bait him, a magnificent dinner was given in the Rue Ca.s.sini flat, amidst a display of all its tenant's gold and silver plate, liberated from the p.a.w.nbroker's for the occasion by a timely advance of two thousand francs from Werdet. The feast was an entire success, and an appointment was fixed for the next day at the Russian's hotel. Alas! when the envoy went, he received, sandwiched in the guest's thanks for the royal entertainment of the preceding evening, an announcement of the said guest's immediate departure for Russia and the intimation that, as the n.o.bleman was not returning to Paris for some time, it would be impossible for him to accept the offer of a sleeping-partners.h.i.+p in the Review. Three months later the _Chronicle_ was resold to Bethune for a small sum; and the publisher disposed of it to a third person, who, however, did not succeed in keeping it alive. Balzac's loss by his experiment was about twenty thousand francs.

And this loss was not the only disagreeable part of the business.

There were the bills signed to Duckett. They being protested in 1837, Duckett sued the novelist and obtained judgment against him. At this moment, Balzac, tracked by his creditors, had taken temporary refuge with some friends, the Count Visconti and his English wife, who lived in the Champs Elysees. Here he remained incognito. One day a man, wearing the uniform of a transport company, called at the mansion and informed the servant that he had brought six thousand francs for Monsieur de Balzac. Suiting the action to his words, he dumped down on to the floor a heavy bag that c.h.i.n.ked as it struck the hall tiles.

"Monsieur de Balzac does not live here," was the servant's reply.

"Then is the master of the house in?" asked the man. "No, but the mistress is." "Then tell her I have six thousand francs for Monsieur de Balzac." The servant vanished and soon the lady of the mansion appeared and offered to sign the receipt herself. To this the man demurred. He must either see Monsieur de Balzac or must take the money away again. There was a hurried confabulation between hostess and guest, the upshot of which was that Balzac, falling into the snare, came to the man, thinking that some generous friend had sent him the money; and he was immediately served with an arrest-warrant for debt.

"I am caught," he cried; "but I will pillory Duckett for this. He shall go down to posterity with infamy attached to his name." To get the novelist out of the mess, Madame Visconti paid the debt for which the warrant had been made out; and thus spared him, for the nonce, a sojourn in the debtors' prison at Clichy.

Balzac's lawsuit with the _Revue de Paris_, the details of which are given in the Viscount de Lovenjoul's _Last Chapter of the History of Balzac's Works_, was brought about by the novelist's quarrel, in 1835, with Buloz, the editor, because the latter, while the _Lily in the Valley_ was being printed, communicated proofs of it to the _Revue Francaise_ of Saint Petersburg. Balzac at once severed his connection with the _Revue de Paris_, and took away his novel, on the ground that the editor was not justified in selling it abroad without his--the author's--permission, and especially was not justified in communicating premature proofs, which, owing to his practice of modifying the text while correcting it, could in no way represent his finished work. After an attempt made by mutual friends to settle the matter amicably, Buloz entered an action against Balzac to compel him to continue the publication of the _Lily in the Valley_ in the _Revue de Paris_. Three parts had been given. It was the end which the Review demanded, and ten thousand francs damages for the delay. The case was heard in May 1836, after months of bitter controversy, in which both sides had their ardent supporters. The most was made by the plaintiff's barrister of Balzac's previous disputes with other editors, who had had to complain of his tardiness in completing articles or stories. A letter was also put in, signed by Alexandre Dumas, Eugene Sue, Frederic Soulie, and others, stating that it was usual for authors to allow the communication of their productions to the _Revue Francaise_ of Saint Petersburg, with a view to combating Belgian and German piracies. And Jules Janin, who during the Thirties was a zealous opponent of Balzac, cast his weight of evidence in favour of the Review. The _Seraphita_ episode was dragged in, too, with testimony to show that, even after Werdet had bought the right to publish the novel in book form, Balzac again negotiated for its continuation as a serial in the Review, and had, moreover, supplied some other chapters, yet without coming to the end. In fact, the suit was a complicated one to decide. Ultimately, the Court gave its verdict against Balzac on the chief point at issue. He lost the conclusion of the _Lily in the Valley_, and recovered only a small sum of money that had been advanced to the novelist for copy not supplied, and besides had to pay all the expenses of his action.

What galled Balzac particularly during the speeches of the plaintiff's barrister, was to hear the style of his novel pulled to pieces in language of mingled sarcasm and clever criticism that delighted the audience and the papers. After the termination of the affair, he thoroughly overhauled the parts of the book which had been so severely handled, made large alterations, and, since fun had also been poked at his pretensions to n.o.ble ancestry, he prefixed a curious introduction to the edition that Werdet was about to publish. In the course of it he declared: "If some persons, deceived by caricatures, false portraits, penny-a-liners, and lies, credit me with a colossal fortune, palaces, and above all, with frequent favours from women . . . I here declare to them that I am a poor artist, absorbed in art, working at a long history of society, which will be either good or bad, but at which I work by necessity, without shame, just as Rossini has made operas or Du Ryer translations and volumes; that I live very much alone, that I have a few firm friends; that my name is on my birth-certificate, etc., just as that of Monsieur de Fitz-James is on his; that, if it is of old Gaulish stock, this is not my fault; but that de Balzac is my patronymic, an advantage which many aristocratic families have not who called themselves Odet before they were called Chatillon, Duplessis, and who are, none the less, great families."

To the foregoing he joined a long account of his birth and his presumed t.i.tle to ancient lineage, and inserted into the bargain a panegyric of Werdet as a man of activity, intelligence, and probity, with whom his relations would be unbroken, since by this same declaration he const.i.tuted him henceforward his sole publisher. That was in July 1836. Scarcely six months after, when Werdet was threatened with a bankruptcy which was likely to involve him--a repet.i.tion in minor degree of Scott's entanglement with Constable--he veered completely round, called Werdet a rotten plank, an empty head, an obstinate mule, and other names more expressive than polite, affirmed that he had always considered him a bit of a fool, and dropped all further connection with him. Werdet, it is true, was no business genius, but he was really attached to Balzac, and had yielded to the great man's importunities as long as his purse would support the strain.

The _Lily in the Valley_ was published by Werdet in the week after the lawsuit was finished, and was well received by the public. Its success, however, was more considerable abroad than in France. The author complained of the smallness of the numbers sold in France compared with those of foreign editions; but Werdet's figures indicate a very fair sale, and are larger than those given by Balzac, who in this instance at least was not so accurate as his publisher.

The novel deals with the struggle in the heart of a Madame de Mortsauf, torn between her affection for Felix de Vandenesse and her determination to remain outwardly faithful in conduct towards her husband. With his invariable enthusiasm for subjects that pleased him in his own work, Balzac believed and affirmed that this secret combat waged in a valley of the Indre was as important as the most famous military battle ever fought. Possibly the amount of early personal biography in the book--yet a good deal romanced--led him to this conviction. Possibly, too, the richness with which he adorned its style helped to foster the opinion he held, which critics have not ratified. Not even Lamartine, his eulogist, found much to say in favour of the story. To the first part alone he gave his approval, likening it to the Song of Solomon. The rest he thought vulgar, and hinted that the heroine degenerates into a sort of hermaphrodite character. Brunetiere's estimate, given in a parenthesis, is not much more favourable. And Taine, when dipping into the book for examples of Balzac's style, neutralizes his praise of one portion by his depreciation of another.

Apart from the question of the novel's style, which is turgid because the lyric note intrudes, the most legitimate objection to the book is the sentimentalism which pervades it throughout, and palls on the reader before he reaches the conclusion. Like Richardson in his _Pamela_, but far to a greater extent than Richardson, Balzac has placed the struggle on the physical plane. Madame de Mortsauf permits de Vandenesse to make love to her, to caress her, and she accords him everything with the single exception of that which would confer on her husband the right to divorce her. The interest of the book therefore is largely a material one. The moral issue is thrown into the background. And de Vandenesse, moreover, is not a person that inspires us with respect or even pity. He consoles himself with Lady Dudley, while swearing high allegiance to his Henriette.

In sooth, the swain's position resembled the novelist's own. Honore was also inditing oaths of fidelity to his "dear star," his "earth-angel" in far-away Russia, while wors.h.i.+pping at shrines more accessible. Lady Dudley may well have been, for all his denial, the Countess Visconti, of whom Madame Hanska was jealous and on good grounds, or else the d.u.c.h.ess de Castries, to whom he said that, in writing the book, he had caught himself shedding tears. His reminiscences of Madame de Berny aided him in composing the figure of the heroine, whose death-bed scene was soon to become sober reality.

Madame de Berny died in July, having had a last pleasure in perusing the story that immortalized her affection for the novelist. Balzac had been intending to pay her a farewell visit; but he was then in the midst of embarra.s.sments of all kinds, and the journey was postponed until it was too late.

At this moment, the affair of the _Chronique_ was being liquidated; and then Madame Bechet, his late publisher, was dunning him for some arrears of copy that he owed her. His brother Henry, too, going from bad to worse, was in a position that necessitated Madame de Balzac's giving up the remnants of her capital; and, to crown all, a son of Laurence, the dead sister, quitting an unhappy home, was living as a vagabond on the streets of Paris, whence he had to be rescued. Since, to these worries and griefs, there was added certain disquieting news from Eve, whose aunt, from reading some of his books, supposed him to be a gambler and debauchee and was trying to turn her niece against him, it was not astonis.h.i.+ng that he should have been completely unnerved. While at Sache, where he had come to stay with some friends, the de Margonnes, in order to terminate the work he was obliged to do for Madame Bechet, he had an attack of apoplexy; and, on recovering from it, was glad to seize an opportunity offered him of a journey to Italy to escape for a while from the scene of his toiling and moiling and to have a radical change. His good genius on this occasion was the Count Visconti, who, having some legal business of a litigious nature to settle at Turin and not being able to attend to it personally, asked him to go instead. On this trip he was accompanied by Madame Marbouty, a woman of letters, better known under her pseudonym, Claire Brunne, whose acquaintance he had made some years back at Angouleme.

Madame Marbouty's exterior had much in common with that of George Sand, and the resemblance between the two women gave rise to the report that it was the auth.o.r.ess of _Indiana_ who accompanied Balzac to Italy at this date.

The journey back to Paris was effected through Switzerland, which enabled him to see Geneva again, though under less agreeable auspices than those of 1833. His prospects on returning to France were no better than when he left. Indeed, they were worse, for Werdet's bad circ.u.mstances forced him to pledge himself in several quarters in order to raise some ready money for his immediate wants; and, being pledged, he was bound to produce at high pressure. His _Old Maid_, which he sold to the _Presse_ for eight thousand francs, was written in three nights, _Facino Cane_, in one night, and the _Secret of the Ruggieri_, in one night also. Rossini, happening to meet him during this spell of drudgery, condoled with him and remarked that he himself had gone through the mill.

"But when I did it," he added, "I was dead after a fortnight, and it took me another fifteen days to revive."

"Well!" replied Balzac, "I have only the coffin in view as a rest; yet work is a fine shroud."

Casting round for a means to free himself from a position that had grown intolerable, he was induced to lend himself to a scheme suggested by Chateaubriand's example. Chateaubriand, having fallen into financial straits, sold his pen to a syndicate, in return for an annual stipend. Balzac did something of the same kind. Victor Bohain, who played an intermediary role in the affair, discovered Chateaubriand's capitalist; and a company was formed which paid the novelist fifty thousand francs down to relieve his most pressing needs; and further engaged to allow him fifteen hundred francs a month for the first year, three thousand francs a month for the second year, and, afterwards, four thousand francs a month up to the fifteenth year, when the agreement was to come to an end. In return for these sums, Balzac promised to furnish a fixed number of volumes per year, half profits in which were to be his, after all publis.h.i.+ng expenses were paid. The arrangement was signed on the 19th of November 1836; and this date, in so far as the general quality of his writing is concerned, marks a beginning of decadence. Thenceforward his fiction, published mostly in political dailies first of all--the _Presse_, the _Const.i.tutionnel_, the _Siecle_, the _Debats_, the _Messager_--had to be composed hurriedly and without the corrections which were the _sine qua non_ of Balzac's excellence; and consequently it contained many imperfections inherent in such kinds of literary work. There was irony in the situation. Hitherto, he had despised the daily press and the journalists that supplied it with matter, chiefly, it must be confessed, because of the slatings he had received through these organs of information; and he had revenged himself for the attacks by pillorying the journalistic profession in his novels. Lousteau, Finot, Blondet, and other members of the press appear in his pages as unprincipled men, only too willing to sell themselves to the highest bidder. Of course, such retaliation carried with it injustice; and men of high principle, like Jules Janin, resented this prejudiced condemnation of a cla.s.s for no better reason than its having black sheep, which existed in every circle, trade and profession. Now, Janin had an easy task in convicting of inconsistency an accuser who, since it suited his purpose, was fain to belong to the press brotherhood.

The real derogation, however, was not in Balzac's turning _feuilletoniste_, but in his slipping into the manner and his adopting the artifices that he blamed so unsparingly in Eugene Sue and Alexandre Dumas. Not to speak of his falling off in accurate observation, he inserted more and more padding in his fiction; the aridly didactic encroached upon the artist's creation; and, to make the arid portions go down with his readers, he spiced them with exciting episodes and all the stage tricks common in the serial story.

To tell the truth, he had never quite shaken off his juvenile manner of the _Heiress of Birague_, which rea.s.serted itself so much the more easily as his essentially vulgar temperament was ready to crop out on the slightest encouragement afforded to it. During his best period he had a mentor at his elbow in Charles Lemesle, who always read what he wrote before it went to the printer; and Balzac, though vain, was too intelligent not to avail himself of this friend's pruning. Under the new _regime_ the revising was impossible, and, as a result, that difficult perfection which he had so perseveringly sought was destined to be attained but rarely in the rest of his achievement.

CHAPTER VIII

LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER," 1837, 1838

By the agreement which farmed out Balzac's future production, Werdet was implicitly sacrificed. The final breach did not occur until the middle of 1837, but no fresh book was given him after the November of 1836. There was one unpublished ma.n.u.script that he then had in his possession--the first part of _Lost Illusions_, and this appeared in the following spring. The novelist was intending at the time to bring out a new edition of the _Country Doctor_, of which Werdet held the rights. His idea was to present it for the Montyon prize of the Academy, and, if successful, to devote the money to raising a statue at Chinon in memory of Rabelais. Lemesle was one Sunday at Werdet's place, engaged in revising the book, when Balzac arrived in an excited state of mind, and sprang on the astonished publisher the demand that their respective positions should be legally specified in writing, and a clean sweep made which should leave him perfectly free. Previously their business relations had been carried on by verbal understandings, which, as a matter of fact, did not bind the novelist overmuch, since he never sold either a first or a subsequent edition of any of his novels for more than a comparatively short period--usually a year--at the end of which he recovered his entire liberty, whether the edition were exhausted or not. Werdet acquiesced, though grievously offended and disappointed; but asked that certain accounts outstanding from the year before should be settled on the same occasion. The promise was given, and everything was put straight, except the reimburs.e.m.e.nt of the money Werdet had advanced. Instead of acquitting this debt, the ingenious author endeavoured to squeeze a little more cash out of his long-suffering publisher. For once, Werdet lost his temper, and sent the great man off with a flea in his ear. It would almost look as if Balzac had provoked the quarrel, since, on the very evening after the tiff, he returned to Werdet's and offered to redeem all existing copyrights that the publisher held for the price of sixty-three thousand francs. His proposal was accepted, and Bethune, who was acting on behalf of the novelist's syndicate, paid over the amount.

The transaction was the best possible for Werdet, who was too poor to continue playing Maecenas to his Horace. Against such incurable improvidence, and such little regard for strict equity in money dealings, nothing but the impersonality of a syndicate could stand.

Nevertheless, one cannot help regretting that the intercourse of the two men should have ceased. Having so great a personal regard for his hero, and having besides his share of the observant faculty, Werdet, could have supplied us with biographical details of the last twelve years of the novelist's life much more interesting than those of Gozlan, Gautier, and Lemer. His naive narrations, which are well composed and have humour, carry with them a conviction of their sincerity, whatever the errors of chronology.

Werdet's prosperity finished with Balzac as it had commenced with him.

He was ultimately compelled to file his pet.i.tion in bankruptcy, and, abandoning business on his own account, to take up travelling for other firms. His creditors were not tender towards the novelist, and used to the utmost the lien they had upon the few unterminated engagements that involved him in the liquidation. A letter addressed by Balzac to the Marquis de Belloy, his former secretary, testifies to the annoyance the creditors caused him:--

"MY DEAR CARDINAL" (he wrote, calling the Marquis by a nickname), --"Your old Mar" (a familiar appellation applied to Balzac by his friends) "would like to know if you are at Poissy, as it is possible he may come and request you to hide him. There is a warrant out against him on Werdet's account, and his counsellors recommend him to take flight, seeing that the conflict between him and the officers of the Commercial Tribunal is begun. If you are still at Poissy, a room, concealment, bread and water, together with salad, and a pound of mutton, a bottle of ink, and a bed, such are the needs of him who is condemned to the hardest of hard literary labour, and who is yours.

"LE MAR."

The last occasion on which Werdet forgathered with his favourite author was at his house in the Rue de Seine, where, in February 1837, he gave a dinner. Some young members of the fair s.e.x were present; and Balzac, whether to produce a greater impression upon these or because he had been making some society calls, arrived nearly an hour late.

Nothing very special occurred during the evening, but the _soiree_ had its conclusion disturbed by a thunderbolt. On rising to depart, Balzac sought his wonderful stick--an inseparable companion--which was nowhere to be found. Every nook was explored without result. The great man yielded to a veritable fit of despair. A suspicion crossed his mind: "Enough of this trick, gentlemen," he cried to the male guests.

"For Heaven's sake, restore me my stick. I implore you!" and he tore at his long hair in vexation. But the guests a.s.sured him they were as ignorant as himself of the stick's whereabouts. Werdet then said he would take a cab and inquire at all the places the novelist had visited in the course of the afternoon. Two hours later he came back, announcing that his jaunt had been useless. At this news, Balzac fainted outright. The loss of his talisman was overwhelming. When he was brought round again, Werdet suggested what ought to have been suggested in the first instance, namely, that they should proceed to the livery stables and see whether the stick had been left in the carriage which the novelist had used while on his peregrinations. The proposal was jumped at. He went thither, accompanied by Werdet, and had the ineffable joy of discovering the missing bauble quietly reposing in a corner of the vehicle.

During the year of 1836, he had had the unique experience of corresponding for some months continuously with an unknown lady, who called herself Louise, and to whom, in remembrance of their epistolary intercourse, he dedicated his short tale _Facino Cane_. Whether he really had the opportunity of learning who she was--as he a.s.serted --and refrained from availing himself of it through deference to her wishes, is doubtful. Some, if not all, of the letters he received from "Louise" were written in English; and at least one water-colour painting was sent him which had been executed by the lady's own hand.

From the tone of his own epistles, which grew warmer onwards till the end, one may conjecture that the dame was a second Madame Hanska, smitten with the novelist's person through reading his works; and Balzac, whose heart was made of inflammable stuff and whose brain was always castle-building, indulged for a time the hope of meeting with another ideal princess to espouse. Like the Orientals, he was quite capable of nouris.h.i.+ng sentiments of devotion towards as many beautiful and fortuned women as showed themselves amenable. The sudden cessation of Louise's letters, towards the end of 1836, freed him from the risk of Eve's learning of these divided attentions; and it may be presumed that the latter divinity was kept in ignorance of his wors.h.i.+pping elsewhere.

_Facino Cane_ was a blind old violinist who encountered Balzac, if there is any truth in the story, one evening at a restaurant where he was playing for the members of a wedding-party. Something in the old man's dignified aspect moved the novelist deeply, and, accosting him, Balzac drew forth gradually the narration of his life. Facino was, in reality, a Venetian n.o.bleman, at present reduced to dire poverty and obliged to dwell in the Hospice of the Quinze-Vingts.[*] In his youth he had been imprisoned within the Doge's Palace, and, while there, had accidentally come upon the secret treasures it contained. After his escape from confinement, his dream had been to meet with some one who would help him to gain possession of this wealth, without taking advantage of his blindness. And now he confided his plan to Balzac with undiminished faith in the possibility of its accomplishment. The pathos of the old man's situation is created with sober touches. Among the novelist's minor tales, this is one of the simplest and best.

[*] Hospital founded by Saint Louis for three hundred n.o.blemen whose sight had been destroyed by the Saracens.

In his reminiscences, Theophile Gautier mentions, apropos of _Facino Cane_, that Balzac himself was persuaded he knew the exact spot, near the Pointe-a-Pitre, where Toussaint Louverture, the black dictator of Santo Domingo, had his booty buried by negroes of that island, whom he then shot. To Sandeau and Gautier the novelist explained, with such eloquence and precision, his scheme for obtaining the interred wealth that they were wrought up to the point of declaring themselves ready to set out, armed with pick-axe and spade, and to put into action Edgar Allen Poe's yarn of the _Gold Bug_. When money was the theme, Balzac's tongue was infinitely persuasive.

One is tempted to wonder whether his returning to Italy in the spring of 1837, and his visit to Venice, after Florence and Milan, were not an indirect consequence of his _Facino Cane_ story. It is certain that he regarded the ancient land of the Caesars as a possible El Dorado; and, curiously enough, he came back this time, if not with Sindbad's diamonds, yet with some prospect of becoming a Silver King. Throughout the remainder of the twelvemonth, a plan, connected with this prospect, was simmering in his head, a plan which, we shall see, was less chimerical than most of those that he concocted.

While he was at Milan, the Italian sculptor Puttinati modelled his bust, which pleased him so much that he gave him a order for a group representing _Seraphita_ showing the path heavenward to Wilfrid and Minna. At Venice, he began _Ma.s.similla Doni_, one of his philosophic novels, in which the love episode is interwoven with mysticism and music, and Rossini's _Mose_ is a.n.a.lysed with skill. His best production of the year was _Cesar Birotteau_. The subject he had borne in his mind for a long while, but had feared to start on it on account of the difficulty of treating it imaginatively. At last, tempted by an offer of twenty thousand francs if he would complete it by a fixed date, he sat down to the task and wrote the novel in three weeks.

The _Grandeur_ (or _Rise_) _and Fall of Cesar Birotteau_, to give the book its fuller t.i.tle, has neither plot nor progress of love-pa.s.sion.

Its value--which is great--is almost entirely dependent on a number of little things that make up an imposing whole. The subject is a commonplace one. Birotteau, who is a dealer in perfumes, and has invented a Sultana cosmetic and a Carminative Water, has reached a position of influence and substance. Urged by his wife's desire to s.h.i.+ne in society, he allows himself to be inveigled into an expenditure that compromises his fortune and reduces him to insolvency. Although retaining the esteem of his fellow-citizens, who are convinced of his integrity, Cesar is stricken to the heart, less by the loss of his money than by his failure to meet his engagements.

In vain, his wife and daughter hire themselves out in order to aid in remedying the disaster for which they are largely responsible. In vain, friends rally round him, until, little by little, the debts are paid, the perfumer is rehabilitated, and is honoured even by the King.

On the very evening when, in the society of his family and friends and his daughter's betrothed, he regains the feeling of independence and freedom, death overtakes him. Joy succeeding to the strain is too much for him.

In the background of the novel is a tableau of the Restoration epoch which is admirable; and the intricacies of finance and law, which form so considerable a part of the story, are handled with an ease and fancy that no other writer of fiction has quite equalled. We have a romance of ledgers and day-books, in a business atmosphere that amazingly well reveals the bent and moral worth of the various characters. Cesarine, Villerault, Popinot have traits which one smiles to recognize. And Birotteau's development both of qualities and foibles is free from caricature, yet pleases much.

As was the case with _Eugenie Grandet_, Balzac does not seem to have cared for this masterpiece. The rapidity with which he composed it, and the fatigue he had undergone, caused him to regard it with some irritation. He did not realize that it was all elaborated in his brain before he put in on paper. Probably also he spoke of it under the disappointment he experienced from his continued failures in play-writing. Twice, during the twelvemonth, he tackled pieces which he described to Madame Hanska. One of them, the _Premiere Demoiselle_, refas.h.i.+oned as the _School for Husbands and Wives_, treated the unsavoury theme of an adulterous husband who keeps his mistress in his own house; and the other, _Joseph Prudhomme_, much better in conception, dealt with the not uncommon incident of a girl's making a respectable marriage after a first betrayal, and her bringing up in secret the child born out of wedlock. Certain situations arising from the plot were both original and affecting. But in neither undertaking did he manage to go on to the end. Heine, whom he consulted in his difficulties, advised him to abandon further efforts in writing for the stage. "You had better remain in your galleys," he said. "Those who are used to Brest cannot accustom themselves to Toulon."

The advice was not palatable to a man of his temperament. He wanted all domains to open before him; and poured out his soul in lamentations, even while exhausting himself in fresh attempts. Now that Madame de Berny was dead, his Eve was the chief recipient of these jeremiads. "Are you not tired of hearing me vary my song in all moods?" he asked her. "Does not this unceasing egotism of a man struggling in a narrow circle bore you? Tell me, for, by your letter, you appear to me inclined to throw me over as a sorry pauper that knows only his _paternoster_, and always says the same thing."

To him, as to ambitious men in every century, reflection came now and again, whispering what folly it was to spend life in the sole pursuit of glory. Just now the whisperings must have been more insistent, for he had thoughts of going to live in some sylvan retreat on the banks of the Cher or the Loire, right away from Paris. A visit to Sache, after an illness, afforded him the excuse for searching; and, as he still proposed to write--for his pleasure,--it was congruent he should meditate a sort of Heloise and Abelard idyll--two lovers drawn to the cloister, and telling in epistles to each other the history of their vocation.[*]

[*] This novel was never written, or at least completed. The _Sister Marie des Anges_, so often spoken of in the novelist's correspondence, may have been the one here alluded to.