mething like it, under pressure of debts which were
never fully settled till 1838, and then by a further obligation of ninety
thousand francs, chiefly furnished by his mother and never repaid to her.

It was Balzac's habit throughout his life to relieve the double pressure of
debt and of work by frequent excursions into the country and abroad. On
this occasion he fled to Brittany with an introduction to a M. and Mme. de
Pommereul, who received him hospitably in their chateau near Fougeres. Here
he obtained some of the direct material, and most of the scenery and
atmosphere, for what he himself recognized as his first serious attempt in
novel-writing, _Les Chouans_, or, as it was at first called, _Le Dernier
Chouan_. This book (obviously written in direct following of Scott, of whom
Balzac was a lifelong admirer) has been very variously judged--those who
lay most stress on his realism thinking little of it, while those who
maintain that he was always a romantic "with a difference" place it higher.
It has at any rate brilliant colouring, some very vivid scenes, and almost
more passion as well as "curtain" at its ending than any other of his
books. Though not without a touch of melodrama it differs utterly from the
confused and tedious imitations of Mrs Radcliffe, M. G. Lewis and C. R.
Maturin which fill most of the _Oeuvres de jeunesse_. At the same time
Balzac was engaged on a very different work, the analytic-satirical
sketches which compose the _Physiologie du mariage_, and which illustrate
his other and non-romantic side, again with some crudity, but again also
with a vast advance on his earlier productions. Both were published in the
year 1829, from which his real literary career unquestionably starts. It
had exactly twenty-one years to run.

The history of these twenty-one years, though (in consequence mainly of the
diligence and luck as a collector of the above-named M. de Lovenjoul) the
materials for it are large and constantly accumulating, has never been
arranged in a really standard biography, and there seems to be an
increasing habit of concentrating the attention on parts of it. It divides
itself under three heads mainly, the history of Balzac's business affairs,
that [v.03 p.0298] of his loves and friendships and that of his actual
work. The first has some small resemblance to Scott's similar experiences,
though in Balzac's case there was no great crash but a lifelong pressure;
on the other hand, his debts we