But when, later on, at the age of twenty-seven, Balzac found himself without position, without a profession, entirely unknown, without resources, and burdened, moreover, with a debt of 120,000 francs,—the result of his disastrous experience as printer and publisher,—he had but his pen with which to conquer poverty and combat the world. His family had no faith in him; they had sunk a large sum in his enterprise; he was friendless, and his genius was entirely unrecognized; and it is at once curious and pathetic to note through the rest of his correspondence the continued recurrence and repetition of his dream of prospective fortune and freedom from debt. His first letters after his disaster are profoundly sad: in one he wrote to his sister,— “I must live without asking aid of any one. I must live to work, that I may repay you all; but shall I be able to live long enough to pay my debts of love and gratitude as well?” To the Duchesse d’Abrantès, in the same year, he wrote,— “I wonder if you have ever experienced the extent to which misfortunes develop within us the terrible faculty of breasting a tempest, and of opposing to adversity an immobile calm. “As for myself, I have acquired the habit of smiling at the torments of fate,—torments that still continue. “I am old in suffering, but my light-hearted appearance offers no criterion of my age. I have never been otherwise; I have been always bent beneath a terrible weight. Nothing can give you an idea of the life which I have led, nor of my astonishment at having nothing but fortune to combat. “Were you to inquire about me, you would be unable to obtain any insight to the nature of my misfortunes; but then you know there are those who die without any apparent disease.... “I have undertaken two books at a time, to say nothing of a number of articles. The days evaporate in my hands like ice in the sunlight. I do not live; I waste away; but death from work or from any other cause amounts to the same thing in the end.... I sleep from six in the evening until midnight, and then I work for sixteen hours. I have but one hour of liberty, and that during dinner. I have sworn to owe nothing, and though I die like a dog my courage will support me to the end.” In 1831, he wrote to the same lady,— “You do not know that in 1828 I had but my pen with which to live and pay off 120,000 francs. In a few months I shall be free from debt, and be able to arrange a comfortable home. During the next six months, therefore, I shall enjoy my last miseries. I have asked aid from no one. I have never stretched my hand, either for a page or a sou. I have hidden my griefs and my wounds, and you who know how difficult it is to make money with the pen will, with your feminine glance, be able to sound the depths of the abyss which I disclose to you, and by the side of which I have marched without falling.” In the following year, he wrote to his mother,—