is the trouble with him up to a certain point, and that certain point,
I am very much afraid, is the highest degree in the thermometer of
self-conceit."

Honore admitted, however, that his sister Laurence would be happy in
her marriage and that M. de Montzaigle was a thorough gentleman; but it
was not after this fashion that he himself understood marriage and
love: "Presents, gifts, futile objects, and two, three or four months
of courtship do not constitute happiness," he wrote; "that is a flower
which grows apart and is very difficult to find."

Meanwhile Honore de Balzac, tired of the discomfort of trying to work
at Villeparisis, between his ever-distrustful mother and his indulgent
but sceptical father, hired a room in Paris, no one knows by what
means. There he shut himself in, and there he composed the novels of
his youthful period, having for the time being put aside his dreams of
glory. To earn money and to be free, that was his immediate necessity.
Later on, when he had an assured living, he would be able to undertake
those great works, the vague germs of which he even then carried within
him.

His repeated efforts at last bore fruit; he found collaborators, namely
Poitevin de Saint-Alme, who signed himself "Villargle," Amedee de Bast,
and Horace Raisson, and then a publisher, Hubert, who undertook to
bring out his first novel. It was issued in 1822, in four volumes,
under the somewhat cumbrous title of The Heiress of Birague, a Story
based upon the Manuscripts of Don Rage, Ex-Prior of the Benedictines,
and published by his two Nephews, A. de Villargle and Lord R'Hoone.
This work brought him in eight hundred francs in the form of
long-period promissory notes, which he was obliged to discount at a