“Dear Sister,—I am going to work like the horse of Henri IV. before it was cast in bronze; and this year I hope to make the twenty thousand francs which are to commence my fortune. I have a quantity of novels and dramas to prepare.... In a little while there will be, between the me of to-day and the me of to-morrow, the difference that exists between the boy of twenty and the man of thirty. I reflect; my ideas ripen; and I see that in giving to me the heart and head which I possess Nature has treated me with favor. Believe in me, dear sister; for while I do not despair of being something, some day, I yet have need of a believer. I see now that ‘Cromwell’ had not even the merit of an embryo. As to my novels, they are as poor as the devil, though not half so seductive.”
But when, later on, at the age of twenty-seven, Balzac found himself without position, without a profession, entirely unknown, without resources, and burdened, moreover, with a debt of 120,000 francs,—the result of his disastrous experience as printer and publisher,—he had but his pen with which to conquer poverty and combat the world. His family had no faith in him; they had sunk a large sum in his enterprise; he was friendless, and his genius was entirely unrecognized; and it is at once curious and pathetic to note through the rest of his correspondence the continued recurrence and repetition of his dream of prospective fortune and freedom from debt.
His first letters after his disaster are profoundly sad: in one he wrote to his sister,—
“I must live without asking aid of any one. I must live to work, that I may repay you all; but shall I be able to live long enough to pay my debts of love and gratitude as well?”
To the Duchesse d’Abrantès, in the same year, he wrote,—
“I wonder if you have ever experienced the extent to which misfortunes develop within us the terrible faculty of breasting a tempest, and of opposing to adversity an immobile calm.
“As for myself, I have acquired the habit of smiling at the torments of fate,—torments that still continue.
“I am old in suffering, but my light-hearted appearance offers no criterion of my age. I have never been otherwise; I have been always bent beneath a terrible weight. Nothing can give you an idea of the life which I have led, nor of my astonishment at having nothing but fortune to combat.
“Were you to inquire about me, you would be unable to obtain any insight to the nature of my misfortunes; but then you know there are those who die without any apparent disease....
“I have undertaken two books at a time, to say nothing of a number of articles. The days evaporate in my hands like ice in the sunlight. I do not live; I waste away; but death from work or from any other cause amounts to the same thing in the end.... I sleep from six in the evening until midnight, and then I work for sixteen hours. I have but one hour of liberty, and that during dinner. I have sworn to owe nothing, and though I die like a dog my courage will support me to the end.”