discovered the
birth register of old M. Balzac. He was born on July 22nd, 1746, at La
Nougarie, in the parish of Saint-Martin de Canezac, and is described
in this document, not as Balzac at all, but as Bernard Francois
Balssa, the son of a labourer! At what date he took the name of
Balzac, and whether his celebrated son knew of the harmless deception,
we do not know; but possibly his change of name was another of the
little reserves which the clever old gentleman thought it necessary to
maintain about his past life, and Honore really considered himself a
member of an old family.

At any rate, as M. Bire says, he certainly earned by his pen the right
to nobility, and in this account of him he will be known by his usual
appellation of "De Balzac."

CHAPTER VI

1829 - 1832

Work and increasing fame--Emile de Girardin--Balzac's early
relations with the _Revue de Paris_ and quarrel with Amedee
Pinchot--First letters from Madame Hanska and the Marquise de
Castries--Balzac's extraordinary mode of writing--Burlesque
account of it from the _Figaro_.

The record of the next few years of Balzac's life is a difficult one,
so many and varied were the interests crowded into them, so short the
hours of sleep, and so long the nights of work, followed without rest
by an eight hours' day of continual rush. Visits to printers,
publishers, and editors, worrying interviews with creditors, and
letters on business, politics, and literature, followed each other in
bewilderingly quick succession, and the only respite was to be found
in occasional talks with such friends as Madame de Berny, Madame
Carraud, or the Duchesse d'Abrantes.

Success was arriving. But success with Balzac never meant leisure, or
relief from a heavy burden of debt; it merely gave scope for enormous
prodigies of labour. His passion for work amounted to a disease; and
who can measure the gamut of emotion, ranging from rapture down to
straining effort, which was gone through in those silent hours of
darkness, when the man, the best part of whom lived only in solitude
and night, sat in his monk's habit, before a writing-table littered
with papers? Then, impelled by the genius of creation, he would allow
his imagination full sway, and would turn to account the material
collected by his keen powers of observation and his unparalleled
intuition. It was strenuous labour, with the attendant joy of cal