demonstrations about a scheme from which both were to derive
millions, answered drily:

"Then lend me five francs on strength of the affair."

Noticing this sort of monomania, in an article which he wrote in the
short-lived _Diogenes_, during the month of August 1856, Amedee Roland
said of Balzac:

"His ambition was to vie in luxury with Alexandre Dumas and Lamartine,
who, before the Revolution of 1848, were the most prodigal and
extravagant authors in the five continents. For anything like a chance
of finding his elusive millions, he would have gone to China. Indeed,
on one occasion, he took it into his head he would start, together
with his friend, Laurent Jan, and go to see the great Mogul,
maintaining that the latter would give him tons of gold in exchange
for a ring he possessed, which came, so he asserted, right down from
Mahomet. It was three o'clock in the morning when he knocked at
Laurent Jan's door to inform his sleeping friend of his project; and
the latter had the greatest difficulty in dissuading him from setting
off forthwith in a post-chaise for India, of course, at the expense of
the monarch in question."

In justice, however, to Balzac, it should be stated that not a few of
his suggestions were sensible enough, and contained ideas which, if
properly put into execution, could have yielded profitable results. As
a matter of fact, some were subsequently exploited by people who
listened to them, or heard of them. A scheme of his for making paper
by an improved process, which he tried to realize in 1833, and which
he induced his mother, his sister's husband, and other friends to
support with their capital, anticipated the employment of esparto
grass and wood, which since has been adopted successfully by others
and has yielded large fortunes to them. The scheme was perhaps
premature in Balzac's day, not to speak of his small business
capacity, which was in an inverse ration to his inventiveness.

From one of his conceptions, at least, there issued an important
benefit to the entire literary profession. Already, in the previous
century, Beaumarchais had attempted to establish a society of authors,
whose aim should be to protect the rights of men of letters. His
efforts then met with no response. Balzac revived the proposal, and
coupled with it others tending to improve the material and style of
printing of books. He had to contend with the hostility of certain
publishers and the indifference of many au