In addition to the above-mentioned periodicals, Honore de Balzac printed the Album of History and Anecdote, from January to April, 1827, and he seems also to have been its editor. For, as a matter of fact, subscriptions to it were received at the printing house, No. 17, Rue des Marais-Saint-Germain, and there are anecdotes to be found in it which he afterwards repeated in some of his works. In spite of all his hopes and efforts, the business went from bad to worse, and Balzac endured all the agonies of a merchant who sees the dawn of the day when a note falls due and knows that his cash drawer is empty. We can picture him, anxiously studying his account books, with his elbows on his desk, and imagining a thousand ingenious means of meeting his financial troubles. But the hard reality shattered them, one by one, like thin glass. He was a prey to the money-lenders and the lawyers, who had no mercy upon a poor wretch who had failed to "make good," and accomplish his ruin with mathematical indifference. The sheriffs, the attorneys, the usurers, the intrusive hordes of clerks and process-servers swooped down upon the printing house and the printer, eager to share the spoils. Honore de Balzac, alone in his "horrible struggle," stood at bay against the pack, using all the stratagems that he had learned in long years of conflict to throw them off the track and save his last remaining resources. He put forth all his accumulated cleverness, his fertile spirit of invention, yet he finally had to yield to superior numbers, and witness the rapid and steady disintegration of a business on which he had staked so many hopes.