Besides this work in books, pamphlets, etc., Balzac, as has been said,
did a certain amount of journalism, especially in the _Caricature_,
his performances including, I regret to say, more than one puff of his
own work; and in this, as well as by the success of the _Chouans_, he
became known about 1830 to a much wider circle, both of literary and
of private acquaintance. It cannot indeed be said that he ever mixed
much in society; it was impossible that he should do so, considering
the vast amount of work he did and the manner in which he did it. This
subject, like that of his speculations, may be better finished off in
a single passage than dealt with by scattered indications here and
there. He was not one of those men who can do work by fits and starts
in the intervals of business or of amusement; nor was he one who, like
Scott, could work very rapidly. It is true that he often achieved
immense quantities of work (subject to a caution to be given
presently) in a very few days, but then his working day was of the
most peculiar character. He could not bear disturbance; he wrote best
at night, and he could not work at all after heavy meals. His favorite
plan (varied sometimes in detail) was therefore to dine lightly about
five or six, then to go to bed and sleep till eleven, twelve, or one,
and then to get up, and with the help only of coffee (which he drank
very strong and in enormous quantities) to work for indefinite
stretches of time into the morning or afternoon of the next day. He
speaks of a sixteen hours' day as a not uncommon shift or spell of
work, and almost a regular one with him; and on one occasion he avers
that in the course of forty-eight hours he took but three of the rest,
working for twenty-two hours and a half continuously on each side
thereof. In such spells, supposing reasonable facility of composition
and mechanical power in the hand to keep going all the time, an
enormous amount can of course be accomplished. A thousand words an