usurious rate, besides sharing the profits with his collaborator.
Nevertheless the fact that he had earned money renewed his faith in his
approaching deliverance, and he uttered a prolonged and joyous shout.
He informed Laure of his success, and suggested that she should
recommend his novel as a masterpiece to the ladies of Bayeux, promising
that he would send her a sample copy on condition that she should not
lend it to any one for fear that it might injure his publisher by
decreasing the sales. Straightway he began to build an edifice of
figures, calculating what his literary labours would bring him in year
by year, and feeling that he already had a fortune in his grasp. This
was the starting point of those fantastic computations which he
successively drew up for every book he wrote, computations that always
played him false, but that he continued to make unweariedly to the day
of his death.

From this time on, Honore de Balzac devoted himself for a time, with a
sort of feverish zeal, to the trade of novel-maker for the circulating
libraries. He realised all the baseness of it, but, he argued, would he
not be indebted to it for the preservation of his talent? The Heiress
of Birague was followed by Jean-Louis, or the Foundling Girl, published
by Hubert in four volumes, for which he received thirteen hundred
francs. His price was going up, and his productive energy increased in
proportion. Still working for Hubert, he followed Jean-Louis with
Clotilde de Lusignan, or the Handsome Jew, "a manuscript found in the
archives of Provence, and published by Lord R'Hoone," in four volumes.
It brought him in two thousand, a princely sum!

Henceforward, nothing could stop him on his road to success, and he had
no doubt that he would soon earn the twenty thousand francs which were
destined to form the basis of his fortune. He changed publishers and,