spendthrift's inventory, he hit on the entirely new
idea of providing himself with such a walking-
stick as the world had never yet beheld. A
splendid cane was first procured, was sent to the
jeweller's, and was grandly topped by a huge
gold knob. The inside of the knob was occupied
by a lock of hair presented to the author by an
unknown lady admirer. The outside was studded
with all the jewels he had bought, and with all
the jewels he had received as presents. With
this cane, nearly as big as a drum-major's staff,
and all a-blaze at the top with rubies, diamonds,
emeralds, and sapphires, Balzac exhibited
himself, in a rapture of satisfied vanity, at the
theatres and in the public promenades. The
cane became as celebrated in Paris as the author.
Madame de Girardin wrote a sparkling little
book all about the wonderful walking-stick.
Balzac was in the seventh heaven of happiness;
Balzac's friends were either disgusted or diverted,
according to their tempers. One unfortunate
man alone suffered the inevitable penalty of this
insane extravagance: need it be added that his
name was Werdet?

The end of the connexion between the author
and the publisher was now fast approaching.
All entreaties or reproaches addressed to Balzac
failed in producing the slightest result. Even
confinement in a sponging-house, when creditors
discovered, in course of time, that they could
wait no longer, passed unheeded as a warning.
Balzac only borrowed more money the moment
the key was turned on him, gave a magnificent
dinner in prison, and left the poor publisher, as
usual, to pay the bill. He was extricated from
the sponging-house before he had been there
quite three days; and, at that time, he had spent
over twenty guineas on luxuries which he had
not a farthing of his own to purchase. It is
useless, it is even exasperating, to go on
accumulating instances of this sort of mad and cruel
prodigality: let us advance rapidly to the end.
One morning, Monsieur Werdet balanced accounts
with his author, from the beginning, and found,
in spite of the large profits produced by the
majority of the works, that fifty-eight thousand
francs were (to use his own expression) paralysed
in his hands by the life Balzac persisted in leading;
and that fifty-eight thousand more might
soon be in the same condition, if he had
possessed them to advance. A rich publisher might
have contrived to keep his footing in such a
crisis as this, and to deal, for the time to come,
on purely commercial grounds. But Monsieur
Werdet was a poor man; he had relied on
Balzac's verbal promises when he ought to have
exacted his written engagements; and he had
no means of appealing to the author's love of
money by dazzling prospects of bank-notes
awaiting him in the future, if he chose honestly
to earn his right to them—in short, there was
but one alternative left, the alternative of giving
up the whole purpose and ambition of the book-
seller's life, and resolutely breaking off his ruinous
connexion with Balzac.

Reduced to this situation, driven to bay by
the prospect of engagements falling due which
he had no apparent means of meeting, Monsieur
Werdet answered the next application for an
advance by a flat refusal, and followed up that
unexampled act of self-defence by speaking his
mind at last, in no measured terms, to his illustrious
friend. Balzac turned crimson with suppressed
anger, and left the room. A series of
business formalities followed, initiated by Balzac,
with the view of breaking off the connexion between
his publisher and himself, now that he
found there was no more money to be had.
Monsieur Werdet, on his side, was perfectly
ready to " sign, seal, and deliver," and was most
properly resolute in pressing his claims in due
form of law. Balzac had but one means of meeting
his liabilities. His personal reputation was
gone; but his literary reputation remained as
high as ever; and he soon found a publisher,
with large capital at command, who was ready
to treat for his copyrights. Monsieur Werdet
had no resource but to sell, or be bankrupt. He
parted with all the valuable copyrights for a sum
of sixty thousand and odd francs, which sufficed to
meet his most pressing engagements. Some of
the less popular and less valuable books he
kept, to help him, if possible, through his daily
and personal liabilities. As for gaining any
absolute profit, or even holding his position as a
publisher, the bare idea of securing either
advantage was dismissed as an idle dream. The
purpose for which he had toiled so hard and
suffered so patiently was sacrificed for ever, and
he was reduced to beginning life again as a
country traveller for a prosperous publishing
house. So far as his main object in existence
was concerned, Balzac had plainly and literally
ruined him. It is impossible to part with
Monsieur Werdet, imprudent and credulous as
he appears to have been, without a strong feeling
of sympathy, which becomes strengthened to
something like positive admiration when we discover
that he cherished, in after life, no unfriendly
sentiments towards the man who had
treated him so shamefully; and when we find
him, in the Memoir now under notice, still trying
hard to make the best of Balzac's conduct, and
still writing of him in terms of affection and
esteem to the very end of the book.

The remainder of Balzac's life was, in substance,
merely the lamentable repetition of the
personal faults and follies, and the literary
merits and triumphs, which have already found
their record in these pages. The extremes of
idle vanity and unprincipled extravagance still
alternated, to the last, with the extremes of hard
mental labour and amazing mental productiveness.
Though he found new victims among new
men, he never again met with so generous and
forbearing a friend as the poor publisher whose
fortunes he had destroyed. The women, whose
strange impulses in his favour were kept alive
by their admiration of his books, clung to their
spoilt darling to the last—one of their number
even stepping forward to save him from a
debtors' prison, at the heavy sacrifice of paying
the whole demand against him out of her own
purse. In all cases of this sort, even where