finished Séraphita, and nearly completed the
other book; his angelic friend, Carissima,
already loved Werdet from Balzac's description
of him; Balzac himself was Werdet's friend till
death; Werdet was his Archibald Constable;
Werdet should see him again in fifteen days;
Werdet should ride in his carriage in the Bois
de Boulogne, and meet Balzac riding in his
carriage, and see the enemies of both parties looking
on at the magnificent spectacle and bursting
with spite. Finally, Werdet would have the
goodness to remark (in a postscript) that Balzac
had provided himself with another little advance
of fifteen hundred francs, received from
Rothschild in Vienna, and had given in exchange a bill
at ten days' sight on his excellent publisher, on
his admirable and devoted Archibald Constable.

While Monsieur Werdet was still prostrate
under the effect of this audacious postscript, a
clerk entered his office with the identical bill.
It was drawn at one day's sight instead of ten;
and the money was wanted immediately. The
publisher was the most long-suffering of men;
but there were limits even to his patient endurance.
He took Balzac's letter with him, and
went at once to the office of the Parisian
Rothschild. The great financier received him kindly;
admitted that there must have been some
mistake; granted the ten days' grace; and dismissed
his visitor with this excellent and sententious
piece of advice:

"I recommend you to mind what you are
about, sir, with Monsieur de Balzac. He is a
highly inconsequent man."

It was too late for Monsieur Werdet to mind
what he was about. He had no choice but to
lose his credit, or pay at the end of the ten days.
He paid; and ten days later, Balzac returned,
considerately bringing with him some charming
little Viennese curiosities for his esteemed
publisher. Monsieur Werdet expressed his
acknowledgments; and then politely inquired for the
conclusion of " Séraphita," and the manuscript
of the new novel.

Not a single line of either had been committed
to paper.

The farce (undoubtedly a most disgraceful
performance, so far as Balzac was concerned)
was not played out even yet. The publisher's
reproaches seem at last to have awakened the
author to something remotely resembling a sense
of shame. He promised that "Seraphita,"
which had been waiting at press a whole year,
should be finished in one night. There were
just two sheets of sixteen pages each to write.
They might have been completed either at the
author's house or at the publisher's, which was
close to the printer's. But, no—it was not in
Balzac's character to miss the smallest chance of
producing a sensation anywhere. His last
caprice was a determination to astonish the
printers. Twenty-five compositors were called
together at eleven at night, a truckle-bed and
table were set up for the author—or, to speak
more correctly, for the literary mountebank—in
the workshop; Balzac arrived, in a high state of
inspiration, to stagger the sleepy journeymen by
showing them how fast he could write; and the
two sheets were completed magnificently on the
spot. By way of fit and proper climax to this
ridiculous exhibition of literary quackery, it is only
necessary to add, that, on Balzac's own confession,
the two concluding sheets of " Séraphita" had
been mentally composed, and carefully committed
to memory, two years before he affected to write
them impromptu in the printer's office. It seems
impossible to deny that the man who could act
in this outrageously puerile manner must have
been simply mad; but what becomes of the
imputation when we remember that this very mad-
man produced books which, for depth of thought
and marvellous knowledge of human nature, are
counted deservedly among the glories of French
literature, and which were never more living and
more lasting works than they are at this moment?

"Séraphita" was published three days after
the author's absurd exhibition of himself at the
printer's office. In this novel, as in its
predecessor, Louis Lambert, Balzac left his own firm
ground of reality, and soared, on the wings of
Swedenborg, into an atmosphere of transcendental
obscurity impervious to all ordinary eyes. What
the book meant, the editor of the periodical in
which part of it originally appeared never could
explain. Monsieur Werdet, who published it,
confessed that he was in the same mystified
condition; and the present writer, who has vainly
attempted to read it through, desires to add, in
this place, his own modest acknowledgment of
inability to enlighten English readers in the
smallest degree on the subject of " Séraphita."
Luckily for Monsieur Werdet, the author's
reputation stood so high with the public, that the
book sold prodigiously, merely because it was
a book by Balzac. The proceeds of the sale, and
the profits derived from new editions of the old
novels, kept the sinking publisher from absolute
submersion; and might even have brought him
safely to land, but for the ever-increasing dead
weight of the author's perpetual borrowings, on
the security of forthcoming works which he
never produced.

No commercial success, no generous self-
sacrifice, could keep pace with the demands of
Balzac's insatiate vanity and love of show, at
this period of his life. He had two establishments,
to begin with; both splendidly furnished,
and one adorned with a valuable gallery of
pictures. He had his box at the French Opera,
and his box at the Italian Opera. He had a
chariot and horses, and an establishment of men
servants. The panels of the carriage were
decorated with the arms, and the bodies of the footmen
were adorned with the liveries, of the noble
family of D'Entragues, to which Balzac
persisted in declaring that he was allied, although
he never could produce the smallest proof in
support of the statement. When he could add
no more to the sumptuous magnificence of his
houses, his dinners, his carriage, and his
servants; when he had filled his rooms with every
species of expensive knick-knack; when he had
lavished money on all the known extravagances
which extravagant Paris can supply to the