The office paled. The time was short, the writing unheard of. The monster was transformed and translated as nearly as possible into familiar signs. No one could make head or tail of it. Back it went to the author. The author sent back the first two proofs glued on enormous placards. It was frightful, it was pitiful. From each sign, from each printed word, shot a penstroke, gleaming and gliding like a sky-rocket, and bursting at the extremity in a luminous fire of phrases, epithets, substantives, underlined, crossed, intermingled, erased, and superposed. Its aspect was simply dazzling. Fancy four or five hundred arabesques of this kind, interlacing, knotted together, climbing and slipping from one margin to another and from the bottom to the top. Fancy twelve geographical maps entangling cities, rivers, and mountains in the same confusion, a skein harassed by a cat, all the hieroglyphics of the Pharonian dynasty, or twenty fireworks exploding at once. The office then was far from gay. The typesetters beat their breasts, the presses groaned, the proof-readers tore their hair and the apprentices became howling idiots. The most intelligent recognized the Persian alphabet, others the Madagascan, while one or two considered them to be the symbolic characters of Vishnu. They worked on chance and by the grace of God. The next day M. de Balzac sent back two pages of the purest Chinese. It was then the 1st of December. A generous typesetter offered to blow out his brains. Then other sheets were brought, written in the most legible Siamese. Three compositors lost their sight and the little French that they knew. The proofs were sent back seven consecutive times; then, a few symptoms of excellent French appeared, and there was even noticed a certain connection between the phrases; but the day was fast approaching, and we felt that the book would never appear. Desolation was at its height, and it was at this point that the work became further complicated by an admirable concourse of calamities. At the time when haste was the greatest, the miserable being who that night carried the proof-sheets to M. de Balzac was waylaid and robbed. M. de Balzac had had the forethought to establish himself at Chaillot. The miserable being screamed and yelled. The bandits took to their heels. One proof-sheet was found at Neuilly, another in an orchard, a third descending the Seine. It is certain that they were thrown away only on account of their illegibility. Misfortune has its advantages. The proofs were recovered, but the night was lost. There were cries and gnashing of teeth. The end was fast approaching. However, the typesetters took courage and the workmen took the bit in their teeth. The office galloped. The compositors foamed at the mouth, the presses ravened, the binders were on springs, the apprentices danced with excitement, the proof-reader shook like an epileptic, and the foreman had convulsions. The office was a cage of palsied lunatics.