Still her destiny urged her forward, and she was more than ever resolved, in spite of the difficulty, to follow a literary career: “My life is restricted here, but I feel that I now have an object. I am devoted to one task, and indeed to one passion. The love of writing is a violent, almost an indestructible one; when once it has taken possession of an unfortunate brain it never leaves it again.... I have had no success: my work has been found unnatural by people whose opinion I have asked.... Better known names must take precedence of mine, that is only fair: patience, patience.... Meantime I must live on. I am not above any work. I write even articles for _Figaro_. I wish you knew what that meant; but at least they pay me seven francs a column; and with that I can eat, drink, and go to the play, which is an opportunity for me to make the most useful and amusing observations. “If one wishes to write, one must see everything, know everything, laugh at everything. Ah, ma foi, vive la vie d’artiste! notre devise est liberté.” She thus describes her mornings spent in the editorial offices of the _Figaro_: “I was not very industrious, I must confess, but then I understood nothing of the work. Delatouche would give me a subject, and a piece of foolscap paper, telling me not to exceed certain limits. I often scribbled over ten pages which I threw in the fire, and on which I had not written one word of sense. My colleagues were full of intelligence, energy, and facility. I listened, was much amused, but did no good work, and at the end of the month received an average of twelve francs fifty centimes, and am not sure I was not overpaid at that.” She writes to M. Boucoiran: “People blame me because I write for the _Figaro_. I do not care much what they say. I must live, and am proud enough of earning my bread myself. The _Figaro_ is a means as well as another. I must pass through the apprenticeship of journalism. I know it is often disagreeable; but one need never dirty one’s hands with anything unworthy. Seven francs a column is not much to earn, but it is most important to get a good footing in a newspaper office.” She painted the most vivid portraits of the various eminent men whose aid she sought, and who invariably tried to dissuade her from embarking on a literary career. Balzac, when she first knew him, lived in an “entresol” in the Rue de Cassini.