de Visconti, the lady who had given him asylum. Balzac was caught,
but not taken, for the generous woman promptly paid the debt demanded
of him.
Once again he had been saved, but now all his creditors were at his
heels, and he was like a hare before them, never sure where he could
lay his head. In order to satisfy them he added toil to toil, story to
story, notwithstanding the sorrow caused him by the loss of Mme. de
Berny, that early love who had protected his youth and sustained his
courage, with an unwavering devotion, a heart of wife and mother in
one. His troubles were now constant, and he was forced to carry on a
famous litigation with Buloz, director of the Revue des Deux Mondes,
who had forwarded to the Revue Etrangere of St. Petersburg uncorrected
proofs of the Lily of the Valley. In defending himself he was defending
the common rights of all authors.
Theophile Gautier, whom he had invited to collaborate on the Chronique
de Paris at a time when the author of Mademoiselle de Maupin was but
little known, has left some vivid recollections of Balzac at this
period:
"It was," he writes, "in that same boudoir (the luxurious chamber in
the Rue des Batailles) that he gave us a splendid dinner, on which
occasion he lighted with his own hands all the candles in the vermilion
sconces as well as those in the chandelier and candlesticks.
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