The days slipped away, as fruitful as they were happy; but Balzac's family became troubled over his prolonged absence. They feared that he was wasting his time amid the pleasures of the country, after all the sacrifices they had made for him, and when he ought to be hard at work, clearing off his debts. They summoned him home, and he left Fougeres at the end of October, regretting the interruption to his task. But he had no sooner arrived in Paris than he set to work again, and he did not fail to keep his provincial friends informed of the progress of his novel. The first thing he did was to change its title from The Stripling, to which Mme. de Pommereul had objected, to The Chouans or Brittany Thirty Years Ago, and finally settled definitely on The Last Chouan or Brittany in 1800. This work, the first that he signed with his own name, was finished in the beginning of 1829, and was published by Urbain Canel. On the eleventh of March he announced to the Baron de Pommereul that he was sending him a set. "Between four and six days from now," he wrote, "you will receive the four 12mo volumes of The Last Chouan or Brittany in 1800. "Did I call it my work? . . . It is partly yours also, for as a matter of fact it is built up from the precious anecdotes which you so ably and so generously related to me between glasses of that pleasant and mild vin de Grave and those crisp buttered biscuits." The Last Chouan proved a success. It was criticised and its merit was admitted. L'Universel shows the tone of most of the articles devoted to it: "After all, the work is not without interest; if reduced to half its length, it would be amusing from one end to the other. In general, the style is pretentious in almost all of the descriptive parts, but the dialogue is not lacking in naturalness and frankness." In 1829, after the publication of The Last Chouan, Honore de Balzac plunged boldly, under his own name, into the turmoil of literature. He pushed ahead audaciously, elbowing his way, and he made himself enemies. He went his own road, indifferent to sarcasms, mockeries, and spiteful comments called forth by his tranquil assurance and certainty of his own strength, which he did not try to hide. At a period when it was the fashion to sigh and be pale and melancholy, in a stage-setting of lakes, clouds and cathedrals, and when one was expected to be abnormal and mediaeval, Balzac displayed a robust joviality, he was proud of his stalwart build and ruddy complexion, and, far from looking to the past for literary material, his observing and clairvoyant eyes eagerly seized the men of his own time and transformed them into heroes.