The First Success.
Misfortune, far from discouraging Balzac, strengthened all his powers of resistance and exalted his will and his energy. He had a healthy and strongly optimistic nature, upon which chagrins, reverses and sorrows acted like so many stimulants; he was never so resolute as after a defeat. M. Sedillot had barely begun the liquidation of his business affairs, the printing house and foundry, when he gave himself up passionately and exclusively to his literary work, apparently having forgotten all his troubles, save the necessity of paying his debts. He had a habit of prompt decisions and quick action. Eager to break at once all the remaining fetters that bound him to his assignee, he wrote to the General Baron de Pommereul, at Fougeres:
"For the past month I have been busy over some historical researches of great interest, and I hope that in the absence of talent, which in my case is altogether problematic, our national manners and customs may perhaps bring me good luck. I have realised that, no matter how industrious I am, my efforts will not bring me in anything like a living wage before the first of next January; and meanwhile the purest chance has brought to my attention a historic incident of 1798 relating to the war of the Chouans and the Vendeans, which gives me a subject that is very easy to handle. It requires no research, except in regard to the localities.
"My first thought was of you, and I decided to ask you to grant me an asylum for a matter of twenty days. My muse, her trumpet, a quire of paper and myself will surely not be greatly in your way." (Balzac in Brittany, published letter by R. du Pontavice de Heussy.)The general's father had been a friend of Francois Balzac, who had rendered him some financial service; accordingly the son hastened to reply to Honore that his house was open to him. No sooner was the letter received than the latter set forth, such was his haste to leave Paris, collect the material for his story, and find the necessary tranquillity for writing it. He left Paris without change of linen and with his toilet all in disorder, intoxicated with his sense of liberty, "to such an extent," writes M. de Pontavice, "that he presented himself to his provincial friends wearing such a piteous hat that they found it necessary to conduct him forthwith to the only hatter in Fougeres. That honourable tradesman went to infinite pains before he succeeded in discovering any headwear large enough to shelter the bony casket which contained the Human Comedy."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 sacrifices they had made for him, and when he ought to be hard at work, clearing off his debts. They summoned him home, and he left Fougeres at the end of October, regretting the interruption to his task. But he had no sooner arrived in Paris than he set to work again, and he did not fail to keep his provincial friends informed of the progress of his novel. The first thing he did was to change its title from The Stripling, to which Mme. de Pommereul had objected, to The Chouans or Brittany Thirty Years Ago, and finally settled definitely on The Last Chouan or Brittany in 1800. This work, the first that he signed with his own name, was finished in the beginning of 1829, and was published by Urbain Canel. On the eleventh of March he announced to the Baron de Pommereul that he was sending him a set.
"Between four and six days from now," he wrote, "you will receive the four 12mo volumes of The Last Chouan or Brittany in 1800.