; and in order to be near the
theatre Balzac established himself in the fifth floor of the house of
Buisson, his tailor, at the corner of the Rue Richelieu. His
proceedings were, as usual, eccentric. One day Gautier, who tells the
story, was summoned in a great hurry, and found his friend clad in his
monk's habit, walking up and down his elegant attic, and shivering
with impatience.

"'Here is Theo at last,' he cried, when he saw me. 'You idler! dawdle!
sloth! gee up, do make haste! You ought to have been here an hour ago!
To-morrow I am going to read to Harel a grand drama in five acts.'

"'And you want my advice,' I answered, settling myself comfortably in
an armchair, ready to submit to a long reading.

"From my attitude Balzac guessed my thought, and said simply, 'The
drama is not written.'

"'Good heavens!' said I: 'well, then you must put off the reading for
six weeks.'

"'No, we must hurry on the drama to get the money. In a short time I
have a large sum of money to pay.'

"'To-morrow is impossible; there is no time to copy it.'

"'This is the way I have arranged things. You will write one act,
Ourliac another, Laurent-Jan the third, De Belloy the fourth, I the
fifth, and I shall read it at twelve o'clock as arranged. One act of a
drama is only four or five hundred lines; one can do five hundred
lines of dialogue in a day and the night following.'

"'Relate the subject to me, explain the plot, sketch out the
characters in a few words, and I will set to work,' I said, rather
frightened.

"'Ah,' he cried, with superb impatience and magnificent disdain, 'if I
have to relate the subject to you, we shall never have finished!'"[*]

[*] "Portraits Contemporains--Honore de Balzac," by Theophile Gautier.

After a great deal of trouble, Gautier managed to persuade Balzac to
give him a slight idea of the plot, and began a scene, of which only a
few words remain in the finished work. Of all Balzac's expected
collaborators, Laurent-Jan, to whom "Vautrin" is dedicated, was the
only person who worked seriously.

In two months and a half of rehearsals Balzac became almost
unrecognisable from worry and overwork. His perplexities became public
property, and people used to wait at the door of the theatre to see
him rush out, dressed in a huge blue coat, a white waistcoat, brown
trousers, and enormous shoes with the leather tongues outside, instead
of inside, his trousers. Everything he wore was many sizes too big for