nt part of France, or perhaps in Corsica, Sardinia, or Italy. It
is not surprising that even in these early days, and in spite of
Balzac's exuberant vitality, there are frequent mentions of terrible
fatigue and lassitude, and that the services of his lifelong friend,
Dr. Nacquart, were often in requisition, though his warnings about the
dangers of overwork were generally unheeded.

Even with Balzac's extraordinary power of work, the number of his
writings is remarkable, when we consider the labour their composition
cost him. Sometimes, according to Theophile Gautier, he bestowed a
whole night's labour on one phrase, and wrote it over and over again a
hundred times, the exact words that he wanted only coming to him after
he had exhausted all the possible approximate forms. When he intended
to begin a novel, and had thought of and lived in a subject for some
time, he wrote a plan of his proposed work in several pages, and
dispatched this to the printer, who separated the different headings,
and sent them back, each on a large sheet of blank paper. Balzac read
these headings attentively, and applied to them his critical faculty.
Some he rejected altogether, others he corrected, but everywhere he
made additions. Lines were drawn from the beginning, the middle, and
the end of each sentence towards the margin of the paper; each line
leading to an interpolation, a development, an added epithet or an
adverb. At the end of several hours the sheet of paper looked like a
plan of fireworks, and later on the confusion was further complicated
by signs of all sorts crossing the lines, while scraps of paper
covered with amplifications were pinned or stuck with sealing-wax to
the margin. This sheet of hieroglyphics was sent to the
printing-office, and was the despair of the typographers; who, as
Balzac overheard, stipulated for only an hour each in turn at the
correction of his proofs. Next day the amplified placards came back,
and Balzac added further details, and laboured to fit the expression
exactly to the idea, and to attain perfection of outline and symmetry
of proportion. Sometimes one episode dwarfed the rest, or a secondary
figure usurped the central position on his canvas, and then he would
heroically efface the results of four or five nights' labour. Six,
seven, even ten times, were the proofs sent backwards and forwards,
before the great writer was satisfied.

In the _Figaro_ of December 15th, 1837, Edouard Ourliac gives a