Having been appointed a member of the Committee of Official Relations,
a committee which had been created at his suggestion for the purpose of
seeing that men of letters should exercise a just influence over the
government, Balzac drew up in 1841, some highly important Notes to be
submitted to Messieurs the Deputies constituting the Committee on the
Law of literary Property. But that same year, after having worked upon
a Manifesto which the Committee was to present to the ruling powers, he
handed in his resignation from the Society, on the 5th of October, and
it was found impossible to make him reconsider his decision. It may be
that he had received some slight which he could not forgive, or perhaps
he had decided that it was to his interest to retain in his own name
the right to authorise the republication of his works.
At this period he had attained that supremacy of which he had formerly
dreamed in his humble mansarde chamber in the Rue Lesdiguieres, and he
wished to have it crowned by some sort of official recognition.
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