ll you." Threatening to report the affair to Duckett, the novelist
withdrew, pursued by the mocking laughter of the chief editor and the
sub; but, on second thoughts, he deemed it more prudent to let the
matter drop.

Another example of this peculiar assumption of superiority occurred
not long after at a dinner given by Werdet in honour of a young
author, Jules Bergounioux, whose novels were being much read. Among
the guests were Gustave Planche, Jules Sandeau, and Balzac. During the
meal the conversation, after many assaults of wit and mirth, fell on
the necessity of defending writers against the piracy and mutilation
of their books in foreign countries, more especially in Belgium. All
expressed their opinion energetically, young Bergounioux like the
rest, he happening to class himself with his fellows in the words--_we
men of letters_. At the conclusion of his little speech, Balzac
uttered a guffaw: "You, sir, a man of letters! What pretension! What
presumption! You! compare yourself to us! Really, sir, you forget that
you have the honour to be sitting here with the marshals of modern
literature."

This exhibition and others similar were natural to the man. He could
not help them. It was impossible for him not to be continually
proclaiming his own greatness. "Don't tax me with littleness," he said
in one of his letters to Delphine Gay, in which he justified his
breaking with her husband. "I think myself too great to be offended by
any one."

The domestic troubles alluded to above, which were worrying Balzac in
1834, had partly to do with his brother Henry, a sort of ne'er-do-well,
who had been out to the Indies and had returned with an undesirable
wife, and prospects--or rather the lack of them--that made him a
burden to the other members of the family. Madame Balzac, too, was
unwell at Chantilly; and her illnesses always affected Honore, who,
at such moments, reproached himself for not being able to do more on
her behalf. Not that his year's budget was a poor one. The seventy
thousand francs at which he estimated his probable earnings for the
twelvemonth were not on this occasion so very much beyond the truth,
if his author's percentages were included. Werdet--the illustrious
Werdet, who, he said, somewhat resembled the _Illustrious Gaudissart_
--bought an edition of his philosophic novels for fifteen thousand
francs; and, besides two principal books to be mentioned further on,
both of which appeared before the c