deas; but we
must add that his letters make us feel that these ideas are themselves
in a certain sense "things." They are pigments, properties, frippery;
they are always concrete and available. Balzac cared for them only if
they would fit into his inkstand.

He never "jumped out of his car"; but as the years went on he was able
at times to let the reins hang more loosely. There is no evidence that
he made the great fortune he had looked forward to; but he must have
made a great deal of money. In the beginning his work was very poorly
paid, but after his reputation was solidly established he received large
sums. It is true that they were swallowed up in great part by his
"debts"--that dusky, vaguely outlined, insatiable maw which we see
grimacing for ever behind him, like the face on a fountain which should
find itself receiving a stream instead of giving it out. But he
travelled (working all the while en route). He went to Italy, to
Germany, to Russia; he built houses, he bought pictures and pottery. One
of his journeys illustrates his singular mixture of economic and
romantic impulses. He made a breathless pilgrimage to the island of
Sardinia to examine the scoriae of certain silver mines, anciently worked
by the Romans, in which he had heard that the metal was still to be
found. The enterprise was fantastic and impracticable; but he pushed his
excursion through night and day, as he had written the "Pere Goriot." In
his relative prosperity, when once it was established, there are strange
lapses and stumbling-places. After he had built and was living in his
somewhat fantastical villa of Les Jardies at Sevres, close to Paris, he
invites a friend to stay with him on these terms: "I can take you to
board at forty sous a day, and for thirty-five francs you will have
fire-wood enough for a month." In his joke he is apt to betray the same
preoccupation. Inviting Charles de Bernard and his wife to come to Les
Jardies to help him arrange his books, he adds that they will have fifty
sous a day and their wine. He is constantly talking of his expenses, of
what he spends in cab hire and postage. His letters to the Countess
Hanska are filled with these details. "Yesterday I was running about all
day: twenty-five francs for carriages!" The man of business is never
absent. For the first representations of his plays he arranges his
audiences with an eye to effect, like an _impresario_ or an agent. In
the boxes, for "Vautrin," "I insist