being an embryo; and as to my novels, they are not worth a damn; and,
what is more, they are no incentive to do better."

This letter was dated from Villeparisis, on a certain Tuesday evening,
in the year 1822; Honore de Balzac was twenty-three years old; he read
his destiny clearly, but he was fated to achieve it only after
surmounting the hardest obstacles, by "the sweat of toil," to borrow
his own vigorous phrase. While waiting for that desired epoch, when he
would be able to be himself and nothing else, he was forced to continue
to turn the millstone that ground out the worthless grain. In 1823, his
productive power seems to have fallen off, either because he had
exhausted the patience of his publishers, or for some other reason.
During that year he published nothing excepting The Last Fairy or the
New Wonderful Lamp, brought out by Barba.

After the hopes begotten in 1822 and his amazing effort of rapid
production, Balzac once more encountered his old difficulty of placing
his stories, and for nearly three years he waged a fruitless fight. In
order to disarm his mother and give proof of his good will, he gave
lessons to his brother Henri and to young de Berny, the son of a
neighbouring family in Villeparisis; he exhausted himself in efforts
that for the most part were in vain. Nothing, however, broke down his
courage. He succeeded in 1824 in publishing through Buissot Annette and
the Criminal, in four volumes, which was a continuation of The Vicar of
the Ardennes, and was confiscated by the police, and then through
Delongchamps an Impartial History of the Jesuits. Finally Urbain Canel
bought his Wann-Chlore in 1825, and that was the last of the novels of
his youth.

It is interesting to ask, how much headway Honore de Balzac had made