pay visits?
He will not become a member of the Academie because he has not been in
Paris? And when posterity says, 'He wrote "Splendeurs et Miseres des
Courtisanes," "Le Pere Goriot," "Les Parents Pauvres," and "Les
Treize,"' the Academie will answer: 'Yes, but he went on a journey.'"

[*] "Honore de Balzac," by Edmond Bire.

At the first election, which took place on January 11, 1849, the Duc
de Noailles was at the head of the list, with twenty-five papers in
his favour, and Balzac received two; at the second, on January 18th,
when M. de Saint-Priest was the successful candidate, two members of
the Academy again voted for Balzac at the first round of the ballot,
but at the third and deciding round his name was not included at all.
Balzac wrote to Laurent-Jan to ask for the names of his supporters, as
he wished to thank them; and about the same time, in a letter to his
brother-in-law, M. Surville, he let it be understood that he would
never again present himself as a candidate for admission to the
Academie Francaise, as he intended to put that body in the wrong.

This is anticipation; we must return to the end of September, 1848,
when Balzac, after having arranged the necessary business matters,
hurried back to Madame Hanska. For the better guardianship of his
treasures, he left his mother with two servants installed in the Rue
Fortunee, and he expected to return to Paris by the beginning of 1849.
His family did not hear from him for more than a month after his
arrival, when his mother received a letter full, as usual, of
directions and commissions, but giving no news of his own doings. He
was evidently ill at the time he wrote, and a few days afterwards was
seized with acute bronchitis, and was obliged to put off his projected
return to Paris.

Balzac's health all through the winter was deplorable, and under the
direction of the doctor at Wierzchownia, he went through a course of
treatment for his heart and lungs. This doctor was a pupil of the
famous Franck, the original of Benassis in the "Medecin de Campagne,"
and Balzac appears to have had complete faith in him, and to have been
much impressed by his dictum, that French physicians, though the first
in the world for diagnosis, were quite ignorant of curative methods.
Balzac's passion at this time for everything Russian, must have been
peculiarly trying to his family. It surely seemed to them madness that
he should separate himself from his country, should gradu