All the while he was prodigiously productive, but the profits from his works were exceedingly small. This fact was due to his method of composition, according to which some of his works were revised a dozen times or more, and also to the Belgian piracies, from which all popular French authors suffered. In addition to this, his extravagant tastes developed from year to year, and thus prevented him from materially reducing his debts. Unlike most Frenchmen, Balzac was particularly fond of travel in foreign countries, and when allured by the charms of a beautiful woman, he forgot his financial obligations and allowed nothing to prevent his responding to the call of the siren. Thus he was enticed by the Marquise de Castries to go to Aix and from there to Geneva in 1832, and one year later he rushed to Neufchatel to meet Madame Hanska, with whom he became so enamored that a few months afterwards he spent several weeks with her at this same fatal city of Geneva where the Marquise had all but broken his heart. In the spring of 1835 he followed a similar desire, this time going as far as the beautiful city of the blue Danube. The charms of his sirens were not enough, however, to keep so indefatigable a writer from his work. He permitted himself to enjoy social diversions for only a few hours daily and some of his most delightful novels were written during these visits, where it seemed that the very shadow of feminine presence gave him inspiration. It should be added, too, that in the limited time given to society during these journeys, he not only worshipped at the shrine of his particular enchantress of the moment, but managed to meet many other women of social prominence. As his fame spread, his extravagance increased; with his famous cane, he was seen frequently at the opera, at one time sharing a box with the beautiful Olympe. But his business relations with his publisher, Madame Bechet, which seemed to be promising at first, ended unhappily, and the rapidly declining health of his /Dilecta/, Madame de Berny, not to mention the failure of another publisher Werdet, which there is not space here to recount, cast a gloom from time to time over his optimistic spirit. He now became the proprietor of the /Chronique de Paris/, but aside from the literary friendships involved, notably that of Theophile Gautier, he derived nothing but additional worries from an undertaking he was unfitted to carry out. An even greater anxiety was the famous lawsuit with Buloz, which was finally decided in his favor, but which proved a costly victory, since it left him physically exhausted. In order to recuperate, he sought refuge in the home of M. de Margonne, and travelled afterwards with Madame Marbouty to Italy, where he spent several pleasant weeks looking after some legal business for his friends, M. and Mme. Visconti. It was on his return from this journey that he learned of the death of Madame de Berny.