At Les Jardies he had small creditors as well as great, fear of whom haunted him to the extent of curtailing his walks abroad. Leon Gozlan relates that, going over to Ville d'Avray early one morning, he found Balzac taking a constitutional round the asphalt of his house. "Come and have a stroll in the woods," said the visitor. "I am afraid," answered Balzac. "Of what or whom?" "Of the keeper." Not understanding why the novelist, who would not explain, should be in dread of this humble functionary, and imagining that much study and labour had made his friend a little mad, Gozlan took no denial, and, button-holing Balzac, lugged him off into the leafy avenues. And there, sure enough, after a while, they saw the bugbear, who, as soon as he perceived the two pedestrians, bore down on them with plodding but vigorous step. The shorter of the two turned pale, but tried to put on an air of dignified indifference. Soon the official ran in under their lee, passed alongside with slackened pace, and clarioned into the novelist's ear: "Monsieur de Balzac, this is beginning to get musical." The owner of Les Jardies quailed in his shoes. He owed the man thirty francs. CHAPTER X LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER," 1841, 1842 The abode that Balzac chose, on coming back to live within the city walls, was not far from the Rue de Chaillot which had been his address before he removed to Sevres. It was situated in what is now called the Rue Raynouard, but then bore the name of the Rue Basse. In reality, the street is low only at one end, to which it descends from some high land that forms the Passy and Trocadero quarter, and, for some distance, overhangs the Seine. The whole of the street is narrow and winding, and still has an old-time provincial aspect, though the modern building has begun to make its appearance in it, replacing the ancient mansions surrounded by gardens with ever-encroaching blocks of flats. Balzac's new house was at Number 19 (at present Number 47). It stood --and the house still stands--in a back garden, on a lower level than the road, from which it was masked by houses fronting the causeway. Any one approaching it from the side of the Rue Basse would enter the common vestibule of one of these houses, go down some stone steps, and would then find himself in a courtyard, opposite a fairly good-sized, apparently one-storied cottage, with the tree adorned garden to the right of him. Once inside the cottage, however, he would notice that it was built on the extreme upper edge of a precipitous slope, and that on the farther side the structure had lower stories, with an issue through them into a lane at the rear leading to the Seine banks and the lower portion of the Rue Basse. Whoever, therefore, inhabited the cottage could quit it fore or aft, an advantage which must have weighed with the incoming tenant, tracked as he was by creditors, and hiding himself here under the name of Madame de Brugnol.