In 1824, determined to win his independence, young Balzac returned to Paris and set up business as a publisher on borrowed capital. He had a great scheme—the first of many — for making a fortune by bringing out one volume editions of the French classics, and began with Moliere and La Fontaine; but chiefly for want of proper advertising the ven ture failed. He next became a pnnter, having induced his father to advance him the sum nec essary to buy the stock and a printer's license, and seeing a type-foundry offered at a bargain lit presently acquired that also. It was a MO'? t disastrous speculation; bankruptcy was only averted by the help of his mother and of Mme. de Bemy, and this was the beginning of his life-long indebtedness.
Before his business was wound up Balzae was already at work, in a room in the Rue de Tournon, upon the first novel to which he signed his name. (Les Chouans' was finished during a visit to Fourgeres, in the district which is the scene of the historical events it describes, and published in 1829 with some success. The rather cynical manual called 'La Physiologic du Manage' followed; then a number of shorter stories, and, in 1831, (La Peau de Chagrin'— vrith which book his reputation became fairly established. Publishers and editors now sought for his work, and the curiosity and interest his writings already excited are attested by the anonymous correspondence which began at this time to pour in upon him. It was in this way that in 1830, he made the acquaintance of two women, the Marchioness de Castries and Mme. Hanska, whose names cannot be omitted from any account of his life. For Mme. Castries Balzac conceived a transient, but certainly strong passion, which seems to have only grati fied the vanity of a rather heartless but very intelligent great lady; she made a plaything of him; but he owed to her his most genuine in sight into the manners, traditions and ideals of the close society of the Faubourg Saint-Ger main. Her portrait, it is conjectured, may be found in 'La Duchesse de Langeais.' Mme. Hanska, a Polish lady of noble birth, married to a Russian in the Ukraine, was the object of his deepest and most enduring affection, and finally became his wife. His letters to this gEtrangere have in recent years been pub lished; they are discreet, frequent and volumi nous, for these friends or lovers were seldom together, even after the death of M. Hanska, until the Past two years of Balzac's life. His biographers have little tenderness for Mme. Hanslca; hers was certainly an inexpansive nature; her love for her only child, the Countess Anna (afterward Mane. Mniszech), seems to have almost excluded other affections; she cared excessively for her rank and her comfort; tor tured the great man by long deferring to fulfil her secret engagement with him, and in his last illness appears to have shown herself incredibly callous. Mine. Honore de Balzac lived until
1882.
Balzac's story, from 1830 onward, is mainly the story of his herculean industry; and the most memorable dates in his life are doubtless those of the production of such masterpieces as 'Louis Lambert) (1832), 'Le Medecin de Cam pagne) and 'Eugenie Grandet> (1833), 'La Recherche de l'Absolu> and 'Le Pere Goriot' 1834), 'Cesar Birotteau) (1837), 'Illusions Perdues' (1835-41), 'Les Paysans) (1844-45), 'La Cousine Bette' (1846),