“I took the chances of dying to live. In reducing existence to its actual needs, I found that three sous for _charcuterie_ prevented me from dying of hunger and preserved my mind in a state of singular lucidity, while enabling me at the same time to observe the wonderful effects which diet produces on the imagination. My lodging cost three sous a day, I burned at night three sous’ worth of oil, and for two sous more I heated my room with charcoal: and in this manner I lived in my aerial sepulchre, working night and day with such pleasure that study seemed the most beautiful theme, the happiest solution, of existence. The calm and silence necessary to the student possess an indescribable something which is as sweet and intoxicating as love, and study itself seems to lend a sort of magic to all that surrounds us. The forlorn desk on which I wrote, my piano, my bed, my chair, the zigzags of the wall-paper,—all these things became as though animated and humble friends, the silent accomplices of my future. Many a time I have communicated my soul to them in a glance, and often in looking at the broken moulding I encountered new developments of thought, some striking proof of my system, or words which I considered peculiarly fitted to express ideas almost untranslatable.” Balzac had not as yet any settled plan of work, but he tried his hand, while forming his style, at a quantity of comic operas, dramas, comedies, and romances, none of which, however, were accepted save by the gutter’s sneering fatalist, the ragpicker. After many fruitless attempts and knocks at many a door, Balzac succeeded at last in finding a publisher, but of a type seen only in opéra bouffe, who proffered in payment of a romance a promissory note with a year to run. Balzac of course had no choice. He wished to appear in print. The bargain was concluded, and the “Héritière de Birague” was produced. Then, under various pseudonyms, such as Lord R’hoone, the anagram of Honoré, Dom Rago, M. de Viellerglé, and Horace de Saint-Aubin, he produced a quantity of novels somewhat after the style of Pegault Lebrun, and yet so diverse in treatment that one of them, “Wann-Chlore,”[2] was attributed to a luminary of the Romantic school, and another, “Annette et le Criminel,” was suppressed by the censorship. Some of these books, whose paternity he always denied, have since been collected under the title of “Œuvres de Jeunesse,” but of the greater part no trace remains. Exhausted by privations and worn with continued study, Balzac was obliged to return to his family, then established at Villeparisis, where, broken in mind and health, he sank into an almost hopeless dejection.