If success awaited him, he
would gain enough to pay off all his debts; and these he estimated to
be about two hundred thousand francs--a Falstaffian exaggeration, of
course, but the real figures were large. At present, he had no ready
money at all; and had to borrow from his mother, a cousin, and other
friends, in order to get his travelling expenses.

Experience proved that he was correct in his theory. The slag yielded
ten per cent of lead by a first treatment, and the lead ten per cent
of pure silver. Unfortunately, the Genoese merchant had availed
himself of Balzac's hint, and had sold the scheme to a Marseilles
firm, who were already applying for the monopoly to the rulers of the
island, when, in the spring if 1838,[*] he started on his journey
thither; and, before he could do anything, they had obtained the
concession. Once more, he had imprudently thrown out an idea, and lost
his claim on it.

[*] Madame Surville wrongly places the date of the journey in 1833.

On his way south he saw much that was new and novel to him. Passing
through Corsica, he went over the house where the Emperor Napoleon was
born; and, according to his habit of seeking information, he ferreted
out several things that contradicted received history. The _Petit
Caporal's_ father he discovered to have been a fairly rich landowner,
not a sheriff's officer, as tradition said. Moreover, when the Emperor
arrived at Ajaccio from Egypt, instead of being acclaimed and having a
triumphal reception from his countrymen, he was outlawed, a price put
upon his head, and he escaped only through the devotion of a peasant
who hid him in the mountains.

Corsica he considered one of the finest places in the world, with
mountains like those of Switzerland, and needing only the latter
country's lakes. Completely undeveloped, and practically unexplored,
it was inhabited by people that cultivated the _dolce far niente_ to
the utmost. Its population of eight thousand vegetated rather than
lived, ignorant of everything beyond the simplest necessities of
existence. The women disliked strangers, and the men did nothing but
walk about all day, clad in their threadbare velvet coats, smoking to
beguile the hours.

His account of Sardinia is equally curious. It was a wilderness, he
says, with savannas of palm-trees, inhabited by savages. On horseback,
he traversed a virgin forest, obliged to bend over his horse's neck to
avoid the huge branches of holm-oaks and cor