which was to increase with the years, and which was to cost him so
much. At this time, he took frequent walks through the cemetery of
Pere-Lachaise around the graves of Moliere, La Fontaine and Racine. He
would occasionally visit a friend with whom he could converse, but he
usually preferred a sympathetic listener, to whom he could pour out
his plans and his innermost longings. Otherwise his life was as
solitary as it was cloistered. He confined himself to his room for
days at a time, working fiercely at the manuscript of the play,
_Cromwell_, which he felt to be a masterpiece.

This work he finished and took to his home for approval in April,
1820. What must have been his disappointment when, certain of success,
he not only found his play disapproved but was advised to devote his
time and talents to anything except literature! But his courage was
not daunted thus. Remarking that _tragedies_ appeared not to be in his
line, he was ready to return to his garret to attempt another kind of
literature, and would have done so, had not his mother, seeing that he
would certainly injure his health, interposed; and although only
fifteen months of the allotted two years had expired, insisted that he
remain at home, and later sent him to Touraine for a much needed rest.

During his stay at home, he was to suffer another disappointment. His
sister Laure, to whom he had confided all his secrets and longings,
was married to M. Surville in May, 1830, and moved to Bayeux. He was
thus deprived of her congenial companionship. The separation is
fortunate for posterity, however, since the letters he wrote to her
reveal much of the family life, both pleasant and otherwise, together
with a great deal concerning his own desires and struggles. Thus early
in life, he realized that his was a very "original" family, and
regretted not being able to put the whole group into novels. His
correspondence gives a very good description of their various
eccentricities, and he has later immortalized some of these by
portraying them in certain of his characters.

Continually worried by his irritable mother, feeling himself forced to
make money by writing lest he be compelled to enter a lawyer's office,
he produced in five years, with different collaborators, a vast number
of works written under various pseudonyms. He tutored his younger and
much petted brother Henri, but found his pleasures outside of the
family circle. It was arranged that he should give