“The life of an artist,” he said, “should be a succession of splendors;” and while he detested Dumas, he secretly admired his Oriental magnificence and envied his prodigal luxury. But while the firm of Dumas and Company was manufacturing novels by the dozen, Balzac was engaged in weighing a phrase and occupied with its corrections; while Dumas never so much as glanced at the proof-sheets of his feuilletons, Balzac’s were not only carefully corrected, but the attendant expenses were, by agreement, charged to him; and where, as in the case of “Pierrette,” he was obliged to pay for the corrections three hundred francs more than he received for the story itself, it will be readily understood that the amounts which he earned by his pen were not always as satisfactory as could have been desired.
In this respect, however, it should be stated that while the money which he earned in his later years was out of all proportion to that which he at first received, yet, in the mean time, some few debts had necessarily accumulated, and his income, consequently reduced, averaged at best not more than ten or twelve thousand francs.
The history of his financial troubles, and of that which he laughingly termed his floating debt, can best be found in his correspondence, which, ranging from his twentieth year to but a few days prior to his death, contains many details of the thirty years’ war which he waged with poverty; and his letters, while interesting in their account of his transient successes, attendant struggles, defeats, and final victory, will convince even the prejudiced reader, that the writer was, in the first place, a man of the strictest integrity; for it may be said, without exaggeration, that the better part of his life was passed in attempting to satisfy that necessity whose earthly representatives are creditors; secondly, that his morals were perfectly pure, for he loved and reverenced women with that amor intellectualis which made chastity to him one of those graces which are superfluities to the vulgar and necessities to the re-fined; and thirdly, that his heart, which was as great as his brain, was yet too full of affection, for those whom he loved to harbor malice against his detractors and persecutors.
The earliest of these letters, the majority of which are addressed to his sister, or to Madame Zulma Carraud, one of her intimate friends, are mere descriptions of his life and poverty, and are expressed with the smiling indifference of youth, to whom the shadows of the future are yet vague and distant.
“Since you are so much interested in all that I do,” he wrote from Paris to his sister, in 1819, “you must know that last night I slept magnificently; and how could I do otherwise? I dreamed of you, of mother, of my loves, of my hopes, and now, on awakening, I give you my earliest thoughts. I must tell you, in the first place, that that wretch, Myself, becomes more and more negligent. He goes but twice a week for provisions, and then, being economical even of his steps, always to the nearest, and consequently to the worst, shops in the neighborhood; hence, your brother, destined to such celebrity, is already nourished like any other great man, which means that he is dying of hunger.”
To his sister, in the following year, he wrote,—
“I feel to-day that wealth does not constitute happiness, and that my life here will be to me always a source of the sweetest remembrances. To live as I choose; to work when I will, and after my own manner; to do nothing, even, if I so desire; to fall asleep in a beautiful future; to think of you, and to know that you are happy; to possess the Julie of Rousseau for mistress, La Fontaine and Molière for friends, Racine for master, and Père-Lachaise for promenade!... Oh, could it but last forever!”
And a little later,—
“I have just returned from Père-Lachaise, where I have been inhaling magnificent inspirations. Decidedly, the only beautiful epitaphs are such as these, La Fontaine, Molière, Masséna,—a single name which tells all, and makes the passer dream!”...
The next year he wrote,—