arseilles to Ajaccio, and suffered much on the
voyage, though he travelled on the mail steamer from Toulon, and spent
a great deal of money by doing this. However, he was really trying to
be economical, as on his way to Marseilles he had lived on ten sous'
worth of milk a day, and when he reached there he put up at an hotel
where his room cost fifteen sous and his dinner thirty.

The scenery of Corsica was, he said, magnificent; but he did not much
appreciate Ajaccio, where he had to wait some time for a boat to take
him to Sardinia, and said the civilisation was as primitive as that of
Greenland. His only consolation about the delay was in the idea that
he would have time to go on with "La Premiere Demoiselle," for which
George Sand predicted a great success, while his sister told him it
was superb. Therefore, as he had written the "Physiologie du Mariage"
and "La Peau de Chagrin" against the advice of Madame de Berny, he
determined to continue his play in spite of Madame Hanska's
disapproval. His five days' journey to Sardinia was most
uncomfortable, as he travelled in a rowing-boat belonging to French
coral fishers. The food caught consisted of execrable soup, made from
the fish caught by the fishermen during the voyage; and Balzac had to
sleep on the bridge, where he was devoured by insects. To add to his
misfortunes, the boat was kept for five days in quarantine in view of
the port, and the inhabitants refused to give the occupants any food,
or to allow them in a bad storm to attach their cables to the
port-rings. This they managed at last to do, in spite of the objections
of the governor, who, determined to assert his authority, decreed that
the cable should be taken off as soon as the sea became calm: a
regulation which, as Balzac said, was absurd, because either the
people would by that time have caught the cholera, or they would not
catch it at all.

When Balzac at last landed, he felt as though he were in Central
Africa or Polynesia, as the inhabitants wore no clothes, and were
bronzed like Ethiopians. He was much horrified at their misery and
savage condition. Their dwellings he describes as dens without
chimneys, and their food in many parts consisted of a horrible bread
made of acorns ground, and mixed with clay.

No doubt he was not disposed to take a particularly favourable view of
Sardinia, as it was to him the scene of a bitter disappointment. He
had been right in his calculations about the value of