"He was never," related his daughter, Mme. Laure Surville, in her article upon Balzac, "under any circumstances at a loss for a retort. One day, when a newspaper article relating to a centenarian was being read aloud (an article not likely to escape notice in our family, as may well be imagined) he interrupted the reader, contrary to his habit, in order to say enthusiastically, 'There is a man who has lived wisely and has never squandered his strength in all sorts of excesses, as so many imprudent young people do!' It turned out, on the contrary, that this wise old man frequently became drunk, and that he took a late supper every evening, which, according to my father, was one of the greatest enormities that one could perpetrate against one's health. 'Well,' resumed my father imperturbably, 'the man has shortened his life, no doubt about it.'" Francois Balzac was not to be shaken in his opinions. Furthermore, he was not satisfied with asserting them in the course of conversation, but in spite of his lack of confidence in the influence of books upon prejudiced readers (for he considered that the sole exception was the reaction against chivalry brought about by Cervantes's Don Quixote), he wrote a number of pamphlets in which the vigour and originality of his mind are revealed. He published successively: An Essay regarding Two Great Obligations to be fulfilled by the French (1804), An Essay on the Methods of preventing Thefts and Assassinations (1807), A Pamphlet regarding the Equestrian Statue which the French People ought to raise to perpetuate the Memory of Henry IV (1815), The History of Hydrophobia (1819), etc. In the first of these works Francois Balzac proposed that a monument should be raised to commemorate the glory of Napoleon and the French army. Might that not be almost called the origin of the Arc-de-Triomphe? The singularities of Francois Balzac in no wise hurt him in the estimation of the inhabitants of Touraine. He served as administrator of the General Hospice from 1804 to 1812, and introduced there a practical reform in providing remunerative work for the old men. As an attache of the Mayor's office, he had the mayoralty offered him in 1808, but he refused it in order to consecrate himself entirely to the sick and convalescent. At Tours the Balzac household led the life of prosperous bourgeois folk. The father had acquired a house with grounds and farm lands. The Balzacs entertained and were received in society. People enjoyed-- perhaps with some secret smiles--the unexpected outbursts of the husband, and they liked him for his kindly ironies which had no touch of malice. As for the subtle and witty Madame Laure Balzac, who had preserved all the graces of the eighteenth century, she was found delightful by all those whom she admitted to the honour of entering her circle of acquaintances.