him, and dispelling the
dream as its owner laid his hand on the novelist's shoulder, while a
gigantic companion planted himself in front of the street door and cut
off all retreat that way.

"With a refinement of cruelty, which in the eyes of posterity will
considerably diminish the glory of his victory"--I am quoting Balzac's
own words as he related the scene to us at the Hotel des Haricots--the
sergeant-major perfumer would not allow his prisoner to change his
clothes, and while the van with the precious Etruscan vase disappeared
in the distance, Balzac was hustled into a cab to spend a week in
durance vile, where on that occasion he had the company of Adolphe Adam,
the composer of "Le Postillon de Lonjumeau."

However, "les jours de fete etaient passes," and had been for the last
five years, ever since the Hotel des Haricots had been transferred
from the town mansion of the De Bazancourts in the Rue des
Fosses-Saint-Germain to its then locale near the Orleans railway
station. There were no more banquets in the refectory as there had
been of yore. Each prisoner had his meals in his cell. Joseph Mery,
Nestor Roqueplan, and I were admitted as the clock struck two, and had
to leave exactly an hour afterwards. It was during this visit that
Balzac enacted the scene for us which I have endeavoured to describe
above, and reminded Mery of the last dinner he had given to Dumas,
Jules Sandeau, and several others in the former prison, which dinner
cost five hundred francs. Eugene Sue, who was as unwilling as Balzac
to perform his civic duties, had had three of his own servants to wait
upon him there, and some of his plate and silver brought to his cell.

Seeing that the name of the celebrated author of "Les Mysteres de Paris"
has presented itself in the course of these notes, I may just as well
have done with him, for he forms part of the least agreeable of my
recollections. He was also an _habitue_ of the Cafe de Paris. A great
deal has been written about him; what has never been sufficiently
insisted upon was the _inveterate snobbishness of the man_. When I first
knew him, about '42-'43, he was already in the zenith of his glory, but
I had often heard others mention his name before then, and never very
favourably. His dandyism was offensive, mainly because it did not sit
naturally upon him. It did not spring from an innate refinement, but
from a love of show, although his father, who had been known to some of
the son's fam