"The reading public have changed their opinion about the _Country Doctor_, so that Werdet is certain of selling his editions directly. Ha! Ha! "In short, I can meet my liabilities in November and December. Ho! Ho!" This tone changed in October. To his sister now he lamented: "I am drinking the cup to the dregs. In vain I work fourteen hours a day. I cannot suffice." He had held practically the same language to Werdet in May,[*] when he announced to him his intention of starting for Austria, where Madame Hanska was staying. His brain, he said, was empty; his imagination dried up; cup after cup of coffee produced no effect, nor yet baths --these last being the supreme remedy. [*] In Werdet's account this journey is placed between September and November; but the _Letters to the Stranger_ prove that the date he gives is incorrect. Werdet did his best to thwart the trip; but Balzac would not be gainsaid. He affirmed he should return with rejuvenated faculties, after seeing his _carissima_; and ultimately he persuaded his publisher to advance him two thousand francs for his travelling expenses. Profuse in his gratitude, he wrote from his hotel in Vienna --the Hotel de la Poire, situated in the Langstrasse--that, in the society of the cherished one, he had regained his imagination and verve. Werdet, he continued, was his Archibald Constable (_vide_ Walter Scott); their fortunes were thenceforward indissoluble; and the day was approaching when they would meet in their carriages in the Bois de Boulogne and turn their detractors green with envy. This flattery was the jam enveloping the information that he had drawn on his publisher for another fifteen hundred francs; there was also a promise made that he would come back with his pockets full of manuscripts. Instead of the manuscripts, he brought back some Viennese curiosities. He had done no work while with Madame Hanska, but he had seen Munich, and had enjoyed himself immensely, being idolized by the aristocracy of the Austrian capital. "And what an aristocracy!" he remarked to Werdet; "quite different from ours, my dear fellow; quite another world. There the nobility are a real nobility. They are all old families, not an adulterated nobility like in France."