s, with the
intention of perpetuating the novelist's memory. The rotunda of the
private chapel they planned to convert into a kind of circular atrium,
with a fountain in the middle and a trellised gallery running round
it, decorated with busts, statues, and other works of art. Changes
likewise were to be effected in the courtyard, to which the pillars of
the chapel nave had been removed; and a statue of the late owner was
to be erected there, close to a tree, the seed of which had been
planted on the occasion of his marriage. The facade of the house on
the Rue Fortunee, now the Rue Balzac, was also to be embellished, and
the central pavilion made to represent the novelist's apotheosis, with
a monumental bass-relief and a niche. Only a small portion of these
alterations was completed. On Madame de Balzac's death, in 1882, the
property was bought by the Baroness Salomon de Rothschild; and, before
the end of the century, it was demolished and the ground it covered
was incorporated into the Baroness's own gardens. All that now marks
the site is the small dome forming the corner of the Rue Balzac and
the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honore.

Whatever menaces of rupture between the lovers may have darkened their
horizon in the spring and summer of 1847 had vanished before the
autumn. At the end of September, Balzac went by invitation to
Wierzchownia, and remained its guest for over four months. The sight
of Russia's huge oak forests, of which the Mniszech family possessed
some twenty thousand acres, suggested to him another of the grandiose
schemes for gaining a large fortune that he was for ever elaborating
in his brain. His project was to establish an exportation to France of
oak timber, either by sea or rail; which, with every expense figured
out, might yield, so he calculated, a profit of a million two hundred
thousand francs for a part area, and would still leave the estate well
wooded after thinning out the trees. The thing was a gold-mine for him
and his family if a banker could be induced to take it up. Alas! his
brother-in-law was obliged to pour cold water on the project, proving
to him that the expenses, contrary to what he had estimated, would far
exceed the receipts. The weak point in the affair, however, was one
that cheaper transport following on increased railway communication
could remedy. Balzac's only mistake was in imagining that this could
be provided immediately. The visitor to Wierzchownia was not wrong in
th