ved that the suit with which she
threatened him was prompted by his enemies, who seemed to have sworn
his ruin. Madame Bechet lost but little time in carrying out her
threat, for a few days after this he writes:

"Do you know by what I have been interrupted? By a legal notice
from Bechet, who summons me to furnish her within twenty-four
hours my two volumes in 8vo, with a penalty of fifty francs for
every day's delay! I must be a great criminal and God wills that I
shall expiate my crimes! Never was such torture! This woman has
had ten volumes 8vo out of me in two years, and yet she complains
at not getting twelve!"

There had been a question of a lawsuit as early as the autumn of 1835;
to avoid this he was then trying to finish the _Fleur-des-Pois_
(afterwards _Le Contrat de Mariage_). But their relations were more
cordial at that time, for a short time later, he writes: "My
publisher, the sublime Madame Bechet, has been foolish enough to send
the corrected proofs to St. Petersburg. I am told nothing is spoken of
there but of the _excellence of this new masterpiece_."

Both Madame Bechet and Werdet were in despair over Balzac's journey to
Vienna in 1835, but things grew even worse the next year. The novelist
gives this glimpse of his troubles:

"My mind itself was crushed; for the failure of the _Chronique_
came upon me at Sache, at M. de Margonne's, where, by a wise
impulse, I was plunged in work to rid myself of that odious
Bechet. I had undertaken to write in ten days (it was that which
kept me from going to Nemours!) the two volumes which had been
demanded of me, and in eight days I had invented and composed
_Les Illusions perdues_, and had written a third of it. Think what
such application meant! All my faculties were strained; I wrote
fifteen hours a day. . . ."

In explaining Balzac's association with Madame Bechet, M. Henri
d'Almeras states that Madame Bechet was interested, at first, in
attaching celebrated writers to her publishing house, or those who had
promise of fame. She organized weekly dinner parties, which took place
on Saturday, and here assembled Beranger, Henri de Latouche, Louis
Reybaud, Leon Gozlan, Brissot-Thivars, Balzac and Dr. Gentil. It was
with Madame Bechet as with Charles Gosselin. The publication, less
lucrative than she expected, of the first series of the _Scenes de la
Vie parisienne_ and the _Scenes de la Vie de Province_ made it
particularly disag