In her home Honore was treated as a son of the
family, and Commander Carraud also welcomed him with cordial affection.
In their house, just as at Sache, he kept on with his work, for "I must
work" was his life-long cry, which he sometimes uttered blithely, in
the luminous joy of creation, and sometimes with a horrible
breathlessness, as though he was gradually being crushed by the weight
of his superhuman task. But he never succumbed. From the moment of his
arrival at the Powder Works, notwithstanding the fatigue of the
journey, he hardly gave himself time to clasp the hands of his friends
before he plunged into the concluding chapters of Louis Lambert; and
even when he was not writing he gave himself no rest, but set about the
preparation of new works. He led an even more cloistered life here than
at Sache, interrupting all correspondence excepting business letters to
his mother. For he was bent upon gaining two things, money and fame.
Besides, there were the corrections to be made in The Chouans, in the
fourth volume of the Philosophic Tales, and he was writing The Battle
(which never was published), the Contes Drolatiques, the Studies of
Women, the Conversations between Eleven o'Clock and Midnight, La
Grenadiere (written in one night), and The Accursed Child, and at the
same time was planning The Country Doctor, one of his most important
works.
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