HONORE DE BALZAC HIS LIFE AND WRITINGS BY ... - Talebooks

In September, 1828, before the final winding up of affairs, Balzac had
fled from Paris, and had gone to spend three weeks with his friends
the Pommereuls in Brittany. There he began to write "Les Chouans," the
first novel to which he signed his name. With his usual hopefulness,
dreams of future fame filled his brain; and in spite of his
misfortunes, his relief at having obtained temporary escape from his
difficulties and freedom to pursue his literary career was so great,
that his jolly laugh often resounded in the old chateau of Fougeres.
It was certainly a remarkable case of buoyancy of temperament, as the
circumstances in which he found himself were distinctly discouraging.
He was now twenty-nine years old; he owed about 100,000 francs, and
was utterly penniless; while his reputation for commercial capacity
had been completely destroyed. His most pressing liabilities had been
paid by his mother, who was all his life one of his principal
creditors; and he was now firmly under the yoke of that heavy burden
of debt which was destined never again to be lifted from his
shoulders. Once again, as they had done nine years before, his parents
cast off all responsibility for their unsatisfactory son. They had
saved the family honour, which would have been compromised by his
bankruptcy; but they felt that whether he lived or starved was his own
affair. His position was infinitely worse than it had been in those
early days in the Rue Lesdiguieres, when submission would have led to
reinstatement in favour. He was now, as he graphically expressed it,
"thrown into" the Rue de Tournon,[*] and apparently no provision was
made for his wants. His parents, who had moved from Villeparisis to
Versailles the year before, in order to be near Madame Surville,
limited their interference in his affairs to severe criticism on his
want of respect in not coming to see his family, and righteous wrath
at his extravagance in hanging his room with blue calico. These
reproaches he parried with the defence that he had no money to pay
omnibus fares, and could not even write often because of the expense
of postage; while anent the muslin, he stated that he possessed it
before his failure, as La Touche and he had nailed it up to hide the
frightful paper on the walls of the printing-office. Uncrushed by the
scathing comments on his attempts at decoration, curious though
characteristic efforts on the part of a starving man, he writes to his
sister a few days later: "Ah, Laure, if you did but know how
passionately I desire (but, hush! keep the secret) two blue screens
embroidered in black (silence ever!)."[+] He reopens his letter about
the screens to answer one from Madame Surville, written evidently at
the instigation of M. and Mme. de Balzac, to blame his supposed
idleness; and the poor fellow, to whom /this/ fault at least could at
no time be justly imputed, asks her if he is not already unhappy
enough, and tells her pathetically how he suffers from these unjust
suspicions, and that he can never be happy till he is dead. In the
end, however, he returns with childlike persistence to the screens as
a panacea for all his ills, and finishes with: "But my screens--I want
them more than ever, for a little joy in the midst of torment!"
[*] He says himself "Rue Cassini," but this is a mistake.
[+] "Correspondance," vol. i. p. 82.
He had now apparently completely gone under, like many another
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