ain of
phrases, epithets, and substantives, underlined, crossed, mixed,
erased, superposed: the effect is dazzling.

"Imagine four or five hundred arabesques of this sort, interlaced,
knotted, climbing and sliding from one margin to another, and from the
south to the north. Imagine twelve maps on the top of each other,
entangling towns, rivers, and mountains--a skein tangled by a cat, all
the hieroglyphics of the dynasty of Pharaoh, or the fireworks of
twenty festivities.

"At this sight the printing-office does not rejoice. The compositors
strike their breasts, the printing-presses groan, the foremen tear
their hair, their apprentices lose their heads. The most intelligent
attack the proofs, and recognise Persian, others Malagash, some the
symbolic characters of Vishnu. They work by chance and by the grace of
God.

"Next day M. de Balzac returns two pages of pure Chinese. The delay is
only fifteen days. A generous foreman offers to blow out his brains.

"Two new sheets arrive, written very legibly in Siamese. Two workmen
lose their sight and the small command of language they possessed.

"The proofs are thus sent backwards and forwards seven times.

"Several symptoms of excellent French begin to be recognised, even
some connection between the phrases is observed."

So the article proceeds; always in a tone of comic good-temper, but
pointing to a very real grievance and point of dispute; and helping
the reader to realise the long friction which went on, and finally
resulted in the unanimity with which publishers and editors turned
against Balzac after his famous lawsuit, and showed a vindictive hate
which at first sight is surprising. However, in this case the matter
ends happily, as the article closes with:

"It ['Cesar Birotteau'] is now merely a work in two volumes, an
immense picture, a whole poem, composed, written, and corrected
fifteen times in the same number of days--composed in twenty days by
M. de Balzac in spite of the printer's office, composed in twenty days
by the printer's office in spite of M. de Balzac.

"It is true that at the same time M. de Balzac was employing forty
printers at another printing-office. We do not examine here the value
of the book. It was made marvellously and marvellously quickly.
Whatever it is, it can only be a _chef d'oeuvre_!"

CHAPTER VII

1832

Crisis in Balzac's private life--"Contes Drola