tation." His
energetic efforts were of no avail: Peytel was executed at Bourg on
November 28th, 1839, and Balzac, who had espoused his cause with
quixotic enthusiasm, was genuinely sorry. He wrote to Madame Hanska in
September: "I am extremely agitated by a horrible case, the case of
Peytel. I have seen this poor fellow three times. He is condemned; I
start in two hours for Bourg." On November 30th he continues: "You
will perhaps have heard that after two months of unheard-of efforts to
save him from his punishment Peytel went two days ago to the scaffold,
like a Christian, said the priest; I say, like an innocent man."[*]

[*] "Lettres a l'Etrangere."

Another disappointment this year was the fact that Balzac considered
it his duty, after presenting himself as candidate for the Academie
and paying many of the prescribed visits, to retire in favour of
Victor Hugo. As early as 1833 he had aspired to become some day "un
des Quarante," and he then said half jokingly to his sister: "When I
shall work at the dictionary of the Academy!"[*] He was never destined
to receive the honour of admittance to this august body, though after
his first attempt in 1839, when he himself withdrew, he again tried
his fortune in 1843 and in 1849. His normal condition of monetary
embarrassment was one reason for his failure, and no doubt some of the
members of l'Academie Francaise disapproved of certain of his books,
and perhaps did not admire his style. At any rate, as his enemy
Saint-Beuve expressed it concisely: "M. de Balzac est trop gros pour
nos fauteuils," and while men who are now absolutely unknown entered
the sacred precincts without difficulty, the door remained permanently
closed to the greatest novelist of the age.

[*] "Balzac, sa Vie et ses Oeuvres," par Mme. L. Surville (nee de
Balzac).

CHAPTER XII

1840 - 1843

"Vautrin"--_La Revue Parisienne_--Societe des Gens-de-Lettres
--Balzac leaves Les Jardies, and goes to the Rue Basse, Passy
--Death of M. de Hanski--"Les Ressources de Quinola"--"La
Comedie Humaine"--Balzac goes to St. Petersburg to meet Madame
Hanska--Her reasons for deferring the marriage.

The sad fate of "L'Ecole des Menages" did not long discourage Balzac.
At the beginning of 1840 he made an engagement to provide Harel, the
speculative manager of the Theatre Porte-St-Martin, with a drama. The
play was accepted before it was written