at this time that he conceived the desire of proving himself a
gentleman by descent, the issue of a time-honoured stock, the
d'Antragues family. He adopted their coat-of-arms and had his monogram
surmounted by a coronet. Later on he abandoned these pretensions, and
his forceful and proud reply is well known when some one had proved to
him that he had no connection with any branch of that house:

"Very well, so much the worse for them!"

But meanwhile, how about his work? It is not known by what prodigy
Balzac kept at his task, in spite of this busy life of fashion and
frivolity. He published The Purse, Mme. Firmiani, A Study of a Woman,
The Message, La Grenadiere, The Forsaken Woman, Colonel Chabert (which
appeared in L'Artiste under the title of Transaction), The Vicar of
Tours, and he composed that mystical work which cost him so much pains
that he almost succumbed to it, the Biographical Notice of Louis
Lambert. At the same time he corrected, improved and partly rewrote The
Chouans and the newly published Magic Skin, with a view to new
editions, in accordance with the criticisms of his sister Laure and
Mme. de Berny.

Nevertheless, money continued to evaporate under his prodigal fingers;
he had counted upon revenues which failed to materialise, he could no
longer borrow, for his credit was exhausted, and he found himself
reduced to a keener poverty than that of his mansarde garret. After all
this accumulation of work, all this expenditure of genius, to think
that he did not yet have an assured living! He had frightful attacks of
depression, but they had no sooner passed than his will power was as
strong as ever, his fever for work redoubled, and his visionary gaze
discerned the fair horizons of hope as vividly as though they were