er now he lamented:

"I am drinking the cup to the dregs. In vain I work fourteen hours a
day. I cannot suffice."

He had held practically the same language to Werdet in May,[*] when he
announced to him his intention of starting for Austria, where Madame
Hanska was staying. His brain, he said, was empty; his imagination
dried up; cup after cup of coffee produced no effect, nor yet baths
--these last being the supreme remedy.

[*] In Werdet's account this journey is placed between September and
November; but the _Letters to the Stranger_ prove that the date
he gives is incorrect.

Werdet did his best to thwart the trip; but Balzac would not be
gainsaid. He affirmed he should return with rejuvenated faculties,
after seeing his _carissima_; and ultimately he persuaded his
publisher to advance him two thousand francs for his travelling
expenses. Profuse in his gratitude, he wrote from his hotel in Vienna
--the Hotel de la Poire, situated in the Langstrasse--that, in the
society of the cherished one, he had regained his imagination and
verve. Werdet, he continued, was his Archibald Constable (_vide_
Walter Scott); their fortunes were thenceforward indissoluble; and the
day was approaching when they would meet in their carriages in the
Bois de Boulogne and turn their detractors green with envy. This
flattery was the jam enveloping the information that he had drawn on
his publisher for another fifteen hundred francs; there was also a
promise made that he would come back with his pockets full of
manuscripts. Instead of the manuscripts, he brought back some Viennese
curiosities. He had done no work while with Madame Hanska, but he had
seen Munich, and had enjoyed himself immensely, being idolized by the
aristocracy of the Austrian capital. "And what an aristocracy!" he
remarked to Werdet; "quite different from ours, my dear fellow; quite
another world. There the nobility are a real nobility. They are all
old families, not an adulterated nobility like in France."

The Vienna visit, which cost him, in total, some five thousand francs
--a foolish expense in his involved circumstances--was the cause of
his silver plate having to be pawned while he was away, in order that
certain payments of interest that he owed might be made at the end of
the month. Since he was always plunging into fresh extravagance of one
kind or another, his liabilities had a fatal tendency to grow; and at
present even more than before, sinc