In this way scheme succeeded scheme, and one project was abandoned only for another. His latest idea he always considered his best, unless he was agreed with, when he would reverse all his arguments to prove that a precedent one was better still. At one time he thought that through a mathematical combination he had discovered a system which would enable him to break the bank at Baden; at another he proposed to cut down a forest in Poland, and supply Paris with timber, and would have done so had not his brother-in-law proved to him that the expenses for transportation would far exceed any possible profit. To make money, to become a millionaire, and to lead the life of a prince was his constant aim and ambition. “The life of an artist,” he said, “should be a succession of splendors;” and while he detested Dumas, he secretly admired his Oriental magnificence and envied his prodigal luxury. But while the firm of Dumas and Company was manufacturing novels by the dozen, Balzac was engaged in weighing a phrase and occupied with its corrections; while Dumas never so much as glanced at the proof-sheets of his feuilletons, Balzac’s were not only carefully corrected, but the attendant expenses were, by agreement, charged to him; and where, as in the case of “Pierrette,” he was obliged to pay for the corrections three hundred francs more than he received for the story itself, it will be readily understood that the amounts which he earned by his pen were not always as satisfactory as could have been desired. In this respect, however, it should be stated that while the money which he earned in his later years was out of all proportion to that which he at first received, yet, in the mean time, some few debts had necessarily accumulated, and his income, consequently reduced, averaged at best not more than ten or twelve thousand francs. The history of his financial troubles, and of that which he laughingly termed his floating debt, can best be found in his correspondence, which, ranging from his twentieth year to but a few days prior to his death, contains many details of the thirty years’ war which he waged with poverty; and his letters, while interesting in their account of his transient successes, attendant struggles, defeats, and final victory, will convince even the prejudiced reader, that the writer was, in the first place, a man of the strictest integrity; for it may be said, without exaggeration, that the better part of his life was passed in attempting to satisfy that necessity whose earthly representatives are creditors; secondly, that his morals were perfectly pure, for he loved and reverenced women with that _amor intellectualis_ which made chastity to him one of those graces which are superfluities to the vulgar and necessities to the re-fined; and thirdly, that his heart, which was as great as his brain, was yet too full of affection, for those whom he loved to harbor malice against his detractors and persecutors.