Honore de Balzac was exuberant with joy. He took his hosts by storm
through his wit and good humour. He questioned M. de Pommereul as to
the main facts about the Chouans; he jotted down in his notebook, which
he afterwards came to call his larder, a host of original anecdotes
preserved by oral tradition; and he roamed the whole countryside,
fixing in his mind the landscapes and the gestures, attitudes and
physiognomies of the peasants, and saturating himself with the
atmosphere of the region in which he was to place the chief scenes of
his drama.

Those were happy hours during which Honore de Balzac withdrew to his
first-floor room, seated himself before a little table placed close to
the window, and wrote with feverish elation of the heroic acts of the
Blues and the Chouans, of Commander Hulot, Marche-a-Terre and the Abbe
Gudin, and wove tangled threads of the adventures of Fouche's spy Mlle.
de Verneuil, who set forth to save the young stripling and allowed
herself to be caught in the divine snare of love.

On some evenings he remained in the drawing-room in company with his
hosts, and entered into controversies with Mme. de Pommereul, who,
being very pious herself, tried to persuade him to make a practice of
religion; while Balzac, in return, when the discussion was exhausted,
endeavoured to teach her the rules of backgammon. But the one remained
unconverted and the other never mastered the course of the noble game.
Occasionally he helped to pass the time by inventing stories, which he
told with all the vividness of which he was master.

The days slipped away, as fruitful as they were happy; but Balzac's
family became troubled over his prolonged absence. They feared that he
was wasting his time amid the pleasures of the country, after all the