novel which Napoleon is said to have read the last night he passed at
Fontainebleau before taking pathetic farewell of his guard. A few
years before this, she wrote another novel which met with much
success, _Leonine de Monbreuse_, a study of the society and customs of
the _Directoire_ and of the Empire.

Madame Gay had made a literary center of her drawing-room in the rue
Gaillon where she had grouped around her twice a week not only many of
the literary and artistic celebrities of the epoch, but also her
acquaintances who had occupied political situations under the Empire.
Madame Gay, who had made her debut under the _Directoire_, had been
rather prominent under the Empire, and under the Restoration took
delight in condemning the government of the Bourbons. Introduced into
this company, though yet unknown to fame, Balzac forcibly impressed
all those who met him, and while his physique was far from charming,
the intelligence of his eyes reveled his superiority. Familiar and
even hilarious, he enjoyed Madame Gay's salon especially, for here he
experienced entire liberty, feeling no restraint whatever. At her
receptions as in other salons of Paris, his toilet, neglected at times
to the point of slovenliness, yet always displayed some distinguishing
peculiarity.

Having acquired some reputation, the young novelist started to carry
about with him the enormous and now celebrated cane, the first of a
series of magnificent eccentricities. A quaint carriage, a groom whom
he called Anchise, marvelous dinners, thirty-one waistcoats bought in
one month, with the intention of bringing this number to three hundred
and sixty-five, were only a few of the number of bizarre things, which
astonished for a moment his feminine friends, and which he laughingly
called _reclame_. Like many writers of this epoch, Balzac was not