as not Balzac, although his early
biographers, Madame Surville included, gave him the credit for it.

The idea of taking up business was mooted to him first by a Monsieur
d'Assonvillez, an acquaintance of Madame de Berny, whom he used to see
and talk with when staying, as he occasionally did, at the small
apartment rented by his father in Paris. Just then Urbain Canel, the
celebrated publisher of Romantic books, was thinking of putting on the
market compact editions of the old French classics, beginning with
Moliere and La Fontaine; and Balzac, either already knowing him or
being introduced to him by a mutual friend, was admitted to join in
the undertaking. The money necessary for the partnership was lent to
him by Monsieur d'Assonvillez, who, as a sharp business man, imposed
conditions on the loan which secured him from loss in case of failure.
The editions were to be library ones, illustrated by the artist
Deveria (who about this time painted Balzac's portrait), and were to
be published in parts. The price was high, twenty francs for each
work; and additional drawbacks were the smallness of the type and the
poorness of the engravings. No success attended the experiment; at the
end of a twelvemonth not a score of copies had been sold. By common
consent the firm, which had been increased to four partners, broke up
their association, and Balzac was left sole proprietor of the concern,
the assets of which consisted of a large quantity of wastepaper, and
the liabilities amounted to a respectable number of thousand francs.

Madame Surville attributes the fiasco to the professional jealousy of
competitors, who discouraged the public from buying; but the cause of
the discomfiture lay rather in the faulty manner in which the partners
carried out their plan. Monsieur d'Assonvillez being still an
interested adviser, Balzac now submitted to him a project for
retrieving his losses by adding a printing to his publishing business.
The stock and goodwill of a printer were to be bought, and a working
type-setter, named Barbier, was to be associated as a second principal
in the affair, on account of his practical experience. The project was
approved, and the elder Balzac was persuaded to come forward with a
capital of about thirty thousand francs, this sum being required to
pay out the retiring printer, Monsieur Laurens, and obtain the new
firm's patent. Madame de Berny had already lent Honore money to help
him in the publishing