in the new Chamber, and when he did not receive as prompt an answer as
he had expected, he repeated his questions with a certain show of
impatience. At this period of isolation, M. Dablin was also his
factotum and his mentor. Balzac commissioned him to buy a Bible,
carefully specifying that the text must be in French as well as Latin;
he wished to read the Sicilian Vespers; he felt it his duty, as a
simple soldier in the ranks of literature, to attend a performance of
Cinna, by the great General Corneille, from the safe seclusion of a
screened box, and he would be glad to see Girodet's Endymion at the
Exposition, "some morning when there is no one else there," in order
not to betray his incognito!

How happy he was during those hours of liberty that were never to
return and which he was destined to remember with unparalleled emotion,
in his subsequent inferno of ceaseless toil! He was utterly
irresponsible, he made an orgy out of a melon or a jar of preserves
sent him from Villeparisis, and he decorated his garret with flowers,
which were the gift of Laure, his beloved confidante. He had his dreams
and his hours of exultation, when he listened to the mingled sounds of
Paris, which rose faintly to his dormer window during the beautiful
golden evenings of springtime, evenings that seemed to young and
ambitious hearts so heavy-laden with ardent melancholy and hope; and he
would cry aloud: "I realised today that wealth does not make happiness,
and that the time that I am spending here will be a source of sweet
memories! To live according to my fantasy, to work according to my
taste and convenience, to do nothing at all if I so choose, to build
beautiful air-castles for the future, to think of you and know that you
are happy, to have Rousseau's Julie for my mistress, La Fontaine and
Moliere for my friends, Racine for my master and the cemetery of Pere
Lachaise for my promenade! . . . Oh! if all this could last forever!"