although her finances are in control of her husband, she has found
means to lend me no less than forty-five thousand francs, and I paid
back the last six thousand francs in 1836, including five per cent.
interest, of course. But it was only gradually that she came to speak
of my debt. Without her I should certainly have died. She often became
aware that I had had nothing to eat for several days; and she provided
for all my needs with angelic goodness. She encouraged me in that pride
which preserves a man from all baseness, and which today my enemies
reproach me for, as being a foolish self-satisfaction, and which
Boulanger has perhaps somewhat exaggerated in his portrait of me." (The
original of this portrait of Honore de Balzac is at the chateau of
Wierzchownia; there is a copy of it in the Palace at Versailles.)

The illusions which Balzac cherished of the rapid success of his
printing house vanished very soon, and from the outset he found himself
facing the realities of a difficult situation. In spite of all his
efforts, clients remained rare, and there was no sort of order either
in the business organisation or in the financial management. M. Gabriel
Vicaire has made an investigation to determine how many works issued
from Balzac's presses, and he has been unable to count more than one
hundred and fifty, or thereabouts, which was a small number, during a
space of two years, for an important and well-equipped printing house.
The first order that he filled was a druggist's prospectus, Anti-mucous
Pills for Longevity, or Seeds of Life, for Cure, a Parisian druggist,
of No. 77, Rue Saint-Antoine; it was a four-leaf 8vo pamphlet, dated
July 29, 1826. The average orders seem to have been commonplace enough;
nevertheless, Balzac did print a number of interesting books for
various publishers; among others, The Historical and Literary
Miscellanies of M. Villemain, for Ladvocat, and La Jacquerie, Feudal
Scenes, followed by the Carvajal Family, a drama by the "author of the