ling
every faculty, including the highest of all--that of creation--into
activity, and the hours no doubt often passed like moments. But the
fierce battling with expression, the effort to tax super-abundant
powers to the utmost, left their mark; and in the morning Balzac would
drag himself to the printer or publisher, with his hair in disorder,
his lips dry, and his forehead lined.

Jules Sandeau, who had been taken by Balzac to live with him, and who
remarked that he would rather die than work as he did, says that
sometimes, when the passion and inspiration for writing were strong on
him, he would shut himself up for three weeks in his closely curtained
room, never breathing the outside air or knowing night from day. When
utterly exhausted, he would throw himself on his pallet-bed for a few
hours, and slumber heavily and feverishly; and when he could fast no
longer, he would call for a meal, which must, however, be scanty,
because digestion would divert the blood from his brain. Otherwise,
hour after hour, he sat before his square table, and concentrated his
powerful mind on his work, utterly oblivious of the fact that there
was anything in the world save the elbowing, crushing throng of
phantom--yet to him absolutely real--personages, whom he took into his
being, and in whose life he lived. For the time he felt with their
feelings, saw with their eyes, became possessed by them, as the great
actor becomes possessed by the personality he represents. "C'etait un
voyant, non un observateur," as Philarete Chasles said with truth.

In 1829 Balzac was introduced by the publisher M. Levavasseur to Emile
de Girardin, who became--and the connection was life-long--what Mme.
de Girardin called La Touche,--an "intimate enemy." At first all was
harmony. Emile de Girardin's letters, beginning in 1830 with "Mon
tres-cher Monsieur," are addressed in 1831 to "Mon cher Balzac"; but
it is doubtful whether the finish of one written in October, 1830, and
ending with "Amitie d'ambition!!!"[*] is exactly flattering to the
recipient--it savours rather strongly of what is termed in vulgar
parlance "cupboard love." However, Girardin was the first to recognise
the great writer's talents, and at the end of 1829, or the beginning
of 1830, after having inserted an article by Balzac in _La Mode_, of
which he was editor, he invited his collaboration, as well as that of
Victor Varaigne, Hippolyte Auger, and Bois le Comte, in forming a
bibliographica