ever to attain, except in passages and patches, a thoroughly great
style, but also that extraordinary method of composition which in
after days cost him and his publishers so much money.

However, if these ten years of probation taught him his trade, they
taught him also a most unfortunate avocation or by-trade, which he
never ceased to practise, or to try to practise, which never did him
the least good, and which not unfrequently lost him much of the not
too abundant gains which he earned with such enormous labor. This was
the "game of speculation." His sister puts the tempter's part on an
unknown "neighbor," who advised him to try to procure independence by
_une bonne speculation_. Those who have read Balzac's books and his
letters will hardly think that he required much tempting. He began by
trying to publish--an attempt which has never yet succeeded with a
single man of letters, so far as I can remember. His scheme was not a
bad one, indeed it was one which has brought much money to other
pockets since, being neither more nor less than the issuing of cheap
one-volume editions of French classics. But he had hardly any capital;
he was naturally quite ignorant of his trade, and as naturally the
established publishers and booksellers boycotted him as an intruder.
So his _Moliere_ and his _La Fontaine_ are said to have been sold as
waste paper, though if any copies escaped they would probably fetch a
very comfortable price now. Then, such capital as he had having been
borrowed, the lender, either out of good nature or avarice, determined
to throw the helve after the hatchet. He partly advanced himself and
partly induced Balzac's parents to advance more, in order to start the
young man as a printer, to which business Honore himself added that of
typefounder. The story was just the same: knowledge and capital were
again wanting, and though actual bankruptcy was avoided, Balzac got
out of the matter at the cost not merely of giving the two businesses