His brain, which was constantly conceiving plans of every description, had conceived that of bringing out one-volume editions of the classic authors. No such editions as yet existed, and he felt convinced that they would be a good business speculation. And he was right; but the profits of this, as of all Balzac's later speculations, were reaped by others; the projector invariably lost by them. In 1837, for example, when he was in Genoa, the idea occurred to him that the ancient Romans had probably not exhausted their silver mines in Sardinia. He spoke of his idea to a Genoese acquaintance, and determined to follow it up. Next year he spent valuable time in taking a fatiguing journey to the island, to examine the slag of the mines. The state of matters answered exactly to his expectations; but when he applied to the authorities at Turin for permission to work the mines, he found that his Genoese friend had been beforehand with him, had acquired the exclusive right to do so, and was already well on the way to become a rich man. Undoubtedly many of the practical speculations which suggested themselves to Balzac's busy brain were mere chimeræ; nevertheless, his genius reveals itself in them. Just as Goethe's was a nature so at one with nature that his poet's eye, falling accidentally on a palm, discovered the secret of the metamorphosis of plants (one and the same original form in every part of the plant), and that his casual examination of a split sheep's skull laid the foundation of philosophic anatomy, so Balzac's was to such a degree the nature of the inventor and discoverer, on the small as well as on the great scale, that he seemed, like the legendary characters possessed of second sight, to know instinctively where riches lay hidden, seemed, as it were, to carry a divining rod which bent of itself towards gold, the nameless, sexless hero of his works. He certainly was not successful in his attempts to secure the treasure; he was a magician, not a business man.