[*] Hospital founded by Saint Louis for three hundred noblemen whose
sight had been destroyed by the Saracens.

In his reminiscences, Theophile Gautier mentions, apropos of _Facino
Cane_, that Balzac himself was persuaded he knew the exact spot, near
the Pointe-a-Pitre, where Toussaint Louverture, the black dictator of
Santo Domingo, had his booty buried by negroes of that island, whom he
then shot. To Sandeau and Gautier the novelist explained, with such
eloquence and precision, his scheme for obtaining the interred wealth
that they were wrought up to the point of declaring themselves ready
to set out, armed with pick-axe and spade, and to put into action
Edgar Allen Poe's yarn of the _Gold Bug_. When money was the theme,
Balzac's tongue was infinitely persuasive.

One is tempted to wonder whether his returning to Italy in the spring
of 1837, and his visit to Venice, after Florence and Milan, were not
an indirect consequence of his _Facino Cane_ story. It is certain that
he regarded the ancient land of the Caesars as a possible El Dorado;
and, curiously enough, he came back this time, if not with Sindbad's
diamonds, yet with some prospect of becoming a Silver King. Throughout
the remainder of the twelvemonth, a plan, connected with this
prospect, was simmering in his head, a plan which, we shall see, was
less chimerical than most of those that he concocted.

While he was at Milan, the Italian sculptor Puttinati modelled his
bust, which pleased him so much that he gave him a order for a group
representing _Seraphita_ showing the path heavenward to Wilfrid and
Minna. At Venice, he began _Massimilla Doni_, one of his philosophic
novels, in which the love episode is interwoven with mysticism and
music, and Rossini's _Mose_ is analysed with skill. His best
production of the year was _Cesar Birotteau_. The subject he had borne
in his mind for a long while, but had feared to start on it on account
of the difficulty of treating it imaginatively. At last, tempted by an
offer of twenty thousand francs if he would complete it by a fixed
date, he sat down to the task and wrote the novel in three weeks.

The _Grandeur_ (or _Rise_) _and Fall of Cesar Birotteau_, to give the
book its fuller title, has neither plot nor progress of love-passion.
Its value--which is great--is almost entirely dependent on a number of
little things that make up an imposing whole. The subject is a
commonplace one. Birotteau, who is a dealer in