Owing to this attitude there was a certain coldness at
first between the two novelists, but before long they joined forces in
order to enliven their days of imprisonment. Eugene Sue could draw, and
he made a pen-and-ink sketch of a horse, a horseman and a stretch of
seashore, which Balzac inscribed as follows: "Drawn in prison in the
Hotel Bazancourt, where we were under punishment for not having mounted
guard, in accordance with the decree of the grocers of Paris."
A still harsher prison, that of Clichy, very nearly fell to Balzac's
lot, a few months later. His efforts to carry on the Chronique had been
in vain, and he had been obliged to abandon it, toward the middle of
1837, with a fresh accumulation of debts. One of his creditors, William
Duckett, pressed him so vigorously for a sum of ten thousand francs
that Balzac was forced to go into hiding, and the process-servers were
unable to discover him. A woman finally betrayed his retreat, and one
morning the officers of the law presented themselves at the home of
Mme.
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