scheme. At present, she induced her husband to
intervene with the Government so that the printing licence might be
granted without delay.

The printing premises were situated at No. 17, Rue des Marais,
Faubourg Saint-Germain, to-day Rue Visconti, near the Quai Malaquais.
The street, which is a narrow one, subsists nearly the same as it was
a century ago. Older associations, indeed, are attached to it. At No.
19 died Jean Racine in 1699, and Adrienne Lecouvreur in 1730. No. 17
was a new construction when Balzac went to it, having probably been
built on the site where Nicolas Vauquelin des Yveteaux used to receive
the far-famed Ninon in his gardens. On the impost, where formerly
appeared the names Balzac and Barbier, now may be read "A. Herment,
successeur de Garnier." The place is still devoted to like uses.

In the _Lost Illusions_, whose part-sequel _David Sechard_ reproduces
Balzac's life as a printer, there is a description of the ground
floor: "a huge room, lighted on the street-side by an old stained-glass
window and on the inner yard-side by a casement." The passage in
Gothic style led to the office; and on the floor above were the living
rooms, one of which was hung with blue calico, was furnished with
taste, and was adorned with the owner's first novels, bound by
Thouvenin. In this "den," during the two years that he was engaged in
the printing trade, were received the daily visits of her he called
his _Dilecta_.

She could not give him the practical business qualities in which he
was utterly lacking and for which his wonderful intuitions of
commercial possibilities were no compensation; but she could smile at
his enthusiasms and sympathize with his disappointments, which had
their see-saw pretty regularly in the interval from the 1st of June
1826 to the 3rd of February 1828. A very fair trade was done; and, in
fact, some of the books he printed were important: Villemain's
_Miscellanies_, Merimee's _Jacquerie_, Madame Roland's _Memoirs_, not
to speak of his own small _Critical and Anecdotal Dictionary of Paris
Signboards_, published under a pseudonym, or rather anonymously, since
it was signed _Le Batteur de Pave_, the "Man in the Street." But the
senior partner, he who should have financed the concern with all the
more wariness as d'Assonvillez, the principal supplier of capital, had
a mortgage upon the whole estate, allowed himself to be paid for his
printing, more often than not, in bills for which no pro