e a certainty, if he failed to make money
by writing. In deadly fear of this, and with the paralysing
consciousness that his present circumstances were peculiarly
unpropitious as a literary education, he rebelled against the hard
fate which denied him opportunity to work for fame. "Laure, Laure," he
cries at this time, "my two only and immense desires--to be loved and
to be celebrated--will they ever be satisfied?"

Whatever his aspirations might be, it was necessary that he should do
something to support himself, as his parents firmly refused to grant
him the 1,500 francs--about sixty pounds--a year for which he begged,
to enable him to live in Paris and to carry out his vocation. He was
therefore obliged to write at his home at Villeparisis in the midst of
distractions and discouragements. In these unpropitious circumstances
he produced in five years--with different collaborators, whose names
are now rescued from absolute oblivion by their transitory connection
with him--eight novels in thirty-one volumes. That he managed to find
a publisher for most of his novels, and to make forty pounds, sixty
pounds, or eighty pounds out of each, is according to his sister, a
remarkable proof of his strength of will, and also of his power of
fascination. The payment generally took the form of a bill payable at
some distant period--a form of receiving money which does not seem
very satisfying; but at any rate Balzac could prove to his family that
he was earning something, and was himself cheered by his small
successes. We can imagine his feverish anxiety, and the cunning with
which he would exert every wile to induce the publisher--himself a
struggling man--to accept his wares, when he knew that a refusal would
mean mingled scoffs and lamentations at home, and possibly a menace
that not much longer leisure would be allowed him for idling. There is
pathos in the fate of one whose genius is unrecognised till his day on
earth is over, but far harder seems the lot of the man who longs and
struggles, feeling that the power is in him, and who yet, by some
strange gulf between thought and expression, can only produce what he
knows to be worthless. It speaks much for Balzac's courage, patience,
and determination, or perhaps for the intuitive force of a genius
which refused to be denied outlet, that he struggled through this
weary time, and in spite of opposition kept to his fixed purpose of
becoming a writer.

These early works--"L'Herit