It's curious that Balzac who contemplated, elaborated, and corrected his novels with such unrelenting meticulousness, seemed, when it concerned the theater, to become dizzy from the rapidity of his work. Not only did he not rewrite his theater pieces eight or ten times like his books, he really did not write them at all. Having just come upon his first idea, he chose a day for the reading and called his friends to request their assistance in the project; Ourliac, Lassailly, Laurent‑Jan, myself and others, have often been summoned in the middle of the night or at fabulously early times of the morning. It was necessary to drop everything; every minute of delay caused the loss of millions.
A pressing note from Balzac summoned me one day to come right away to 104 Rue de Richelieu, where he had a lodging in the house of Buisson the tailor. I found Balzac wrapped in his monastic frock, and hopping up and down with impatience on the blue and white rug of a tidy attic room that had walls upholstered in light brown percale embellished with blue, because, despite his apparent neglectfulness, he had an understanding of interior design, and always prepared a comfortable den for his laborious vigils; in none of his lodgings was there the picturesque disorder dear to artists.
"Finally, here is Theo!" he cried when he saw me. "You are lazy, slow, slothlike, an obstacle, hurry up then; you should have been here an hour ago. Tomorrow I am reading Harel a great drama in five acts."
"And you would like to have my advice," I responded while settling myself into an armchair like a man who is preparing himself to endure a long lecture.
From my attitude Balzac understood my thought, and he said to me in the most straightforward way, "The drama is not written."
"The devil," I said. "Oh well, you will need to delay the reading for six weeks."
"No. We are going to rush the dramorama to get paid. At this time I have a heavy debt that is due."
"From now until tomorrow, it's impossible; there would not be time to copy it."
"Here is how I have arranged things. You will do an act, Ourliac another, Laurent‑Jan the third, de Belloy the fourth, me the fifth, and I will read at noon as agreed. One act of a drama has no more than four or five hundred lines; one can write five hundred lines of dialogue in a day and in a night."
"Tell me the subject, outline the plan, describe to me in a few words the characters, and I will get to work," I responded to him, somewhat alarmed.