philosophy and lofty social doctrines.

At the same period, from 1829 to 1830, he collaborated with Victor
Ratier on the Silhouette, under his own name and various pseudonyms.
For this periodical he wrote phantasies of a festive tone and somewhat
broad humour: Some Artists (signed, "An Old Artist"), The Studio, The
Grocer, The Charlatan, Aquatic Customs, Physiology of the Toilet, the
Cravat considered by itself and in its relations to Society and the
Individual, Physiology of the Toilet and Padded Coats, Gastronomic
Physiology, etc. In Le Voleur, edited by Maurice Alhoy, he published La
Grisette Parvenue, A Working Girl's Sunday, and Letters on Paris, a
series of articles, incisive and farsighted, dealing with French
politics. Finally, still in 1830, he was almost one of the accredited
editors of La Caricature, for which he wrote fantasies against the
government, sketches of Parisian manners, and pictures of the life of
the capital, some of which were destined later to find their way into
The Magic Skin; namely, Le Cornac de Carlsuhe, Concerning Indifference
in Politics, A Minister's Council, The Veneerer, A Passion in College,
Physiology of the Passions, etc.

But, not satisfied with this fecundity,--which would have exhausted many
another man of letters,--Honore de Balzac, in 1830, founded a critical
organ, in company with Emile de Girardin, H. Auger, and Victor
Varaigne, under the title of Feuilleton des Journaux Politiques.

And there were thousands of pages which Balzac carelessly let fall from
his fertile pen, and which he valued so slightly that he never
afterwards gathered them together for his collected works. On the other
hand, they did not seem to interfere with the composition of his more
important writings, and at the very time that he seemed to be