On September 26th, 1843, during Balzac's absence in St. Petersburg, another play of which he was author was produced at the Gaite. It was called "Pamela Giraud," and the plot is contrived with an ability which proves Balzac's increased knowledge of the art of writing for the theatre. At the same time he has attempted no innovations, but he has kept to the beaten track; and the play is an old-fashioned melodrama with thrilling and heart-rending situations, and virtue triumphant at the end. Owing to Balzac's attack on journalism in the "Monographie de la Presse Parisienne," which had appeared in March, and finished with the words, "Si la presse n'existait pas, il faudrait ne pas l'inventer," the whole newspaper world was peculiarly hostile to him at this time, and his play received no mercy, and was a failure. Curiously enough, Balzac seemed rather pleased at this news, which reached him at Berlin, on his journey home to France. He had made use of the services of two practised writers for the theatre to fit his melodrama to the exigencies of the stage, and possibly this fact dulled his interest in it. At any rate he was strangely philosophical about its fate. On November 28th, 1843, soon after his return to Paris, a vacancy was left in the Academy by the death of M. Vincent Campenon; and Charles Nodier and Victor Hugo proposed Balzac as a candidate for the empty seat. Balzac, however, soon withdrew, as he found that his impecunious condition would be a reason for his rejection, and he wrote promptly to Nodier and to M. de Pongerville, another member of the Academy, that if he could not enter L'Academie because of honourable poverty, he would never present himself at her doors when prosperity was his portion. In September, 1845, another vacancy occurred; but in spite of Madame de Girardin's entreaties that Balzac should again come forward as a candidate, he refused decidedly, and wrote to Madame Hanska that in doing this he knew himself to be consulting her wishes.