Albert Keim and Louis Lumet

“ 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. ”

“ Alas, none of the actualities of life would ever break down his robust confidence nor his golden dreams! Even before The Country Doctor was published he found himself involved in a law suit with his publisher, and after its appearance the public press criticised it sharply. "Everyone has his knife out for me," he wrote to Mme. Hanska, "a situation which saddened and angered Lord Byron only makes me laugh. I mean to govern the intellectual world of Europe, and with two more years of patience and toil I shall trample on the heads of all those who now wish to tie my hands and retard my flight! ”

“ 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 Frapesle, 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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-Piete, in order to save the notes from being protested. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 Seraphita 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. ”