The great literary man of La Comédie Humaine is Daniel d'Arthez, a writer who was serious, a hard worker, and for a long time buried, before achieving his success, in immense studies of philosophy, history and linguistics. Balzac feared facility, and he did not believe that a rapidly produced work could be good. In this context, journalism held a singular repugnance for him, and he regarded the time and talent consecrated to it to be wasted; he didn't hold journalists in any higher regard, and he, who was however such a great critic, despised criticism. The unflattering portraits that he has drawn of Etienne Loustau, of Nathan, of Vernisset, of Andoche Finot, represent fairly well his true opinion of the place of the press. Emile Blondet, introduced into that bad company to represent the good writer, is compensated for his articles in the imaginary Débats of La Comédie Humaine with a rich marriage to the widow of a general, which permits him to leave journalism. Moreover, Balzac never worked toward the point of view of a newspaper. He brought his novels to the magazines and daily newspapers as they had come to him, without preparing any breaks or interesting twists at the end of each installment, to increase the desire for the continuation. His work was broken up into sections that were roughly the same length, and sometimes the description of an armchair would start on one day and finish the next. With justification, he did not want to divide his work into little dramatic or vaudevillian tableaus; he thought of nothing but the book. This working method was often to the detriment of the immediate success that journalism requires of the authors it employs. Eugène Sue, Alexandre Dumas were more frequently victorious in the battles each morning that then captivated the public. He did not obtain immense popularity, like that of Les Mystères de Paris and Le Juif-Errant, of Les Mousquetaires and of Monte-Cristo. Les Paysans, a masterpiece, even caused a great number of readers to cancel their subscriptions to the Presse, where the first installment appeared. Its publication had to be suspended. Every day letters arrived that demanded that it be ended. Balzac was found to be boring! There was still not a good understanding of the great idea of La Comédie Humaine, to take on modern society and write about Paris and our times the book that sadly no ancient civilization has left for us. The collected edition of La Comédie Humaine, by assembling all of the scattered works, put into relief the philosophical intention of the writer. From that date forward, Balzac grew considerably in public opinion, he finally ceased being considered "the most productive of our novelists," a stereotyped phrase that irritated him as much as "the author of Eugénie Grandet."