of combining the
occupations of author and printer. His father was persuaded to provide
the necessary funds, and handed him over 30,000 francs--about 1,200
pounds--with which to start the enterprise. In August, 1826, Balzac
began again joyously, first by himself and afterwards with a partner
named Barbier, whom he had noticed as foreman in one of the
printing-offices to which he had taken his novels. Unfortunately a
printing-licence cost 15,000 francs in the time of Charles X.; and
when this had been paid, Barbier had received a bonus of 12,000 francs,
and 15,000 francs had been spent on the necessary materials, there
remained very little capital with which to meet the current expenses
of the undertaking. Nevertheless, the young partners started full of
hope, having bought from Laurent for 30,000 francs the premises at No.
7, Rue des Marais Saint-Germain, now the Rue Visconti, a street so
narrow that two vehicles cannot pass in it. A wooden staircase with an
iron handrail led from a dark passage to the large barrack-like hall
they occupied: an abode which Balzac tried to beautify, possibly for
Madame de Berny's visits, by hangings of blue calico.

There Balzac developed quickly. He learnt the struggle of a business
life, the duel between man and man, through which thousands pass
without gaining anything except business acuteness, but which
introduced the great psychologist to hundreds of new types, and showed
to his keen, observant eyes man, not in society or domesticity, but in
undress, fighting for life itself, or for all that makes life worth
living. In the Rue de Lesdiguieres he had struggled with himself,
striving in cold and hunger to gain the mastery of his art. Here he
battled with others; and since, except on paper, he never possessed
business capacity, he failed and went under; but by his defeat he
paved the way to future triumph. He passed through an experience
possibly unique in the career of a man of letters, one which imparts
the peculiar flavour of business, money, and affairs to his books, and
which fixed on him for all his days the impression of restless,
passionate, thronging humanity which he pictures in his books. The
abyss between his early romantic novels and such a book as the "Peau
de Chagrin" is immeasurable, and cannot be altogether accounted for by
any teaching, however valuable, or even by the strong influence which
intercourse with Madame de Berny exercised. Something else definite
must hav