covers over with ink, for the night's work has begun, and it will end in torrents of black water, like the battle in torrents of black powder." In spite of the alarming benefits which Balzac attributes to this regime, one is amazed at the abundance of his productions, for, even though he sacrificed a large part of his days and nights, he none the less frequented certain famous salons, was often absent on vacations at M. de Margonne's home at Sache; at La Grenadiere, where he rented a house; and at Nemours. Besides, he had to spare some time to his friends, his publishers, and to the adjustment of his already complicated finances. With his remarkably keen sense of realities, he knew that it did not suffice merely to produce a work in order to have it become known and sell; and, while it was repugnant to him to solicit an article from a fellow craftsman, he excelled in the art of exciting curiosity, and acquiring partisans and women admirers who, upon the publication of each new volume, would loudly proclaim it as a masterpiece. He was on intimate terms with the Duchesse d'Abrantes and Mme. Sophie Gay; he was received by the Baron Gerard and by Mme. Ancelot; he announced to his publisher, Charles Gosselin, that Mme. Recamier had asked him to give a reading from his Magic Skin, "so that we are going to have a whole lot of people to boom us in the Faubourg Saint-Germain." And he did not content himself with all these benevolent "boomers," for, according to Philibert Audebrand, he himself wrote a very flattering article on his own work in La Caricature, over one of his three pseudonyms.