Honore de Balzac [34]
drew up a balance sheet, without any attempt to spare him, and pointed out just what sacrifices were necessary. He was in no position to meet the heavy demands, in spite of his desperate toil. A gleam of hope, however, came in the midst of his distress, for his friends at Sache held out prospects of a wealthy marriage; but this hope was an elusive one: the prospective bride was not expected in Touraine until the month of October, and how in the meantime was he to pay his pressing debts? He calculated the utmost that he could earn, he assumed certain advances, he added up and with the help of his optimism he swelled his prospective receipts, yet not sufficiently to satisfy his creditors. He groaned, for he did not wish to sell at a loss what he had acquired with such difficulty, despoil himself, strip himself bare like a St. John;--then his energy reawoke and his self-confidence enabled him to accept the hard test. He consented to give up his horses,--for whose feed he was still owing, since he could not feed them on poetry, as he humorously wrote to Mme. de Girardin,--and his cabriolet. What matter? He was strong enough to rebuild the foundations of his fortune!
From now on Honore de Balzac thought of nothing but his work. He wrote his Biographical Notice of Louis Lambert in thirty days and fifteen nights; but this effort was so prodigious that an apoplectic stroke prostrated him and he came very near dying. He endured his financial anxieties and empty purse, upheld by the certainty of his own genius. He knew how much unfinished work there was in the first version of his books and he had spells of artistic despair, but they were brief, for he relied on his strength of will to bring his writings to the perfection of which he dreamed. "This Biographic Notice of Louis Lambert," he wrote to Laure, "is a work in which I have tried to rival Goethe and Byron, to out-do Faust and Manfred; and the tilt is not over yet, for the proof sheets are not yet corrected. I do not know whether I shall succeed, but this fourth volume of Philosophic Tales ought to be a final reply to my enemies, and ought to show my incontestable superiority." When his family became concerned over his precarious situation, and the complications in which he had entangled himself, Balzac answered their reproaches by prophesying the future: "Yes, you are right," he said to Laure, "I shall not stop, I shall go on and on until I attain my goal, and you will see the day when I shall be numbered among the great minds of my country." Then, in the same letter, he added, for his mother's benefit: "Yes, you are right, my progress is real and my infernal courage will be rewarded. Persuade my mother to think so too, dear sister; tell her to show me the charity of a little patience; her devotion will be rewarded! Some day, I hope, a little glory will pay her for everything! Poor mother! The imagination with which she endowed me is a perpetual bewilderment to her; she cannot tell north from south nor east from west; and that sort of journeying is fatiguing, as I know from experience!
"Tell my mother that I love her as I did when I was a child. Tears overcome me as I write these lines, tears of tenderness and despair, for I foresee the future, and I shall need that devoted mother on the day of my triumph! But when will that day come?"
Lastly, he explained the necessity of his isolation and excused himself for it: "Some day, when my works are developed, you will realise that it required many an hour to think out and write so many things; then you will absolve me for all that has displeased you, and you will pardon, not the egoism of the man (for he has none), but the egoism of the thinker and worker."
Towards the middle of July he left Sache in order to go to Angouleme, to visit Mme. Carraud, whose husband had been appointed Inspector of the Powder Works, just outside the town. He arrived there on the 17th, intending to stay five weeks and happy to have reached this friendly asylum. Mme. Carraud was one of the women who had the most faith in Balzac; she was the recipient
From now on Honore de Balzac thought of nothing but his work. He wrote his Biographical Notice of Louis Lambert in thirty days and fifteen nights; but this effort was so prodigious that an apoplectic stroke prostrated him and he came very near dying. He endured his financial anxieties and empty purse, upheld by the certainty of his own genius. He knew how much unfinished work there was in the first version of his books and he had spells of artistic despair, but they were brief, for he relied on his strength of will to bring his writings to the perfection of which he dreamed. "This Biographic Notice of Louis Lambert," he wrote to Laure, "is a work in which I have tried to rival Goethe and Byron, to out-do Faust and Manfred; and the tilt is not over yet, for the proof sheets are not yet corrected. I do not know whether I shall succeed, but this fourth volume of Philosophic Tales ought to be a final reply to my enemies, and ought to show my incontestable superiority." When his family became concerned over his precarious situation, and the complications in which he had entangled himself, Balzac answered their reproaches by prophesying the future: "Yes, you are right," he said to Laure, "I shall not stop, I shall go on and on until I attain my goal, and you will see the day when I shall be numbered among the great minds of my country." Then, in the same letter, he added, for his mother's benefit: "Yes, you are right, my progress is real and my infernal courage will be rewarded. Persuade my mother to think so too, dear sister; tell her to show me the charity of a little patience; her devotion will be rewarded! Some day, I hope, a little glory will pay her for everything! Poor mother! The imagination with which she endowed me is a perpetual bewilderment to her; she cannot tell north from south nor east from west; and that sort of journeying is fatiguing, as I know from experience!
"Tell my mother that I love her as I did when I was a child. Tears overcome me as I write these lines, tears of tenderness and despair, for I foresee the future, and I shall need that devoted mother on the day of my triumph! But when will that day come?"
Lastly, he explained the necessity of his isolation and excused himself for it: "Some day, when my works are developed, you will realise that it required many an hour to think out and write so many things; then you will absolve me for all that has displeased you, and you will pardon, not the egoism of the man (for he has none), but the egoism of the thinker and worker."
Towards the middle of July he left Sache in order to go to Angouleme, to visit Mme. Carraud, whose husband had been appointed Inspector of the Powder Works, just outside the town. He arrived there on the 17th, intending to stay five weeks and happy to have reached this friendly asylum. Mme. Carraud was one of the women who had the most faith in Balzac; she was the recipient