This programme, joyously arranged, was fearlessly carried out. The silver was liberated, the caterer inspired with confidence, the invitation accepted, and after a sumptuous repast Balzac, glass in hand, arose and addressed the company as follows:— “Gentlemen, you are all aware of the object for which we have assembled this evening about the liberal and gracious guest here seated at my right. It is the creation of a publication destined to assume, thanks to him and to his munificent intelligence, an unexceptionable position among the reviews of the century. Although I have not, to my great regret, been possessed of sufficient leisure to cultivate as I should have desired this rare intelligence, which has been called not only to fecundate our own, but also to assist us in spreading the fruits of our genius over a world which awaits them, and which, I may confidently state, would never know them save for the generous and effective assistance of our guest, I may nevertheless be permitted to say to what extent he has, in momentary confidences, permitted me to foresee treasuries of encouragement and rich rewards. I do not fear, therefore, to say that the ‘Chronique de Paris’ will owe to him its existence, its splendor, and its popularity. Were my emotion not so great and so real, I would speak at greater length of the future of our cherished and illustrious publication; but I prefer, in begging you, in honor of our guest, to join your toasts to mine, to leave the floor to him, that he may explain what in his generosity he proposes to do for the ‘Chronique de Paris,’ at once happy and proud to possess him as protector and patron.” Then, lowering his voice to one of simple politeness, Balzac turned to his guest, and said, “Be good enough, my dear young friend, to explain what your liberal intentions are.” “Gentlemen,” the banker’s son replied, “I will talk it over with papa.” Balzac grew white as the table-cloth, but, magnificent in his defeat, hardly had the pseudo-capitalist disappeared than he exclaimed, with an accent which might have unsettled destiny itself, “It is daylight; let us repawn the silver!”[20] Partly for the sake of solitude, and partly to affect, for business purposes, an appearance of luxury, Balzac, in 1837, built a villa at Ville d’Avray, which he named Les Jardies, as a reminiscence of the days when Louis XIV. lounged at Versailles. It consisted of but three rooms, or rather three stories. The ground floor, the _rez-de-chaussée_, was the reception-room, the second the study, and the third the bedroom. When the architect’s plan was first submitted, the staircase greatly interfered with the dimensions of the rooms, and Balzac, exasperated at this impertinence, ordered it out of the house, and caused it, by way of punishment, to climb in spiral solitude about the outer wall.