ld now have his share in the honour, a
share in the immortality.

After a peregrination of this magnitude and dreams to match, he
alighted from his Pegasus, and spoke as an ordinary mortal--he had
enjoyed himself, and his fit of the dumps was exorcised. Putting the
last touch to his proof-correcting, he left the house with his face
wreathed in smiles.

"Good-bye," he said to his sister, at the door; "I am off home to see
if the banker is there, waiting for me. If he isn't, I shall find some
work to do all the same; and work is my real money-lender."

CHAPTER V

LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER," 1831, 1832

One has little doubt in deciding that, of the two spurs which goaded
Balzac's labours, his desire for wealth acted more persistently and
energetically than his desire for glory. In his conversations, in his
correspondence, money was the eternal theme; in his novels it is
almost always the hinge on which the interest, whether of character,
plot, or passion, depends. Money was his obsession, day and night;
and, in his dormant visions, it must have loomed largely.

Henry Monnier, the caricaturist, used to relate that, meeting him once
on the Boulevard, the novelist tapped him on the shoulder and said:

"I have a sublime idea. In a month I shall have gained five hundred
thousand francs."

"The deuce, you will," replied Monnier; "let's hear how."

"Listen, then," returned his interlocutor. "I will rent a shop on the
Boulevard des Italiens. All Paris is bound to pass by. That's so,
isn't it?"

"Yes. Well, what next?"

"Next, I will establish a store for colonial produce; and, over the
window, I will have printed, in letters of gold: 'Honore de Balzac,
Grocer.' This will create a scandal; everybody will want to see me
serving the customers, with the classical counter-skipper's smock on.
I shall gain my five hundred thousand francs; it's certain. Just
follow my argument. Every day these many people pass along the
Boulevard, and will not fail to enter the shop. Suppose that each
person spends only a sou, since half of it will be profit to me I
shall gain so much a day; consequently, so much a week; so much a
month."

And thereupon, the novelist, launched into transcendental
calculations, soaring with his enthusiasm into the clouds.

It was the same Henry Monnier who, meeting him another time on the
Place de la Bourse, and having had to listen to another of such
mirific