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Ladies especially bought the volume to find out for themselves how far they had been maligned; and Levavasseur, who was pleased with his profits, introduced Balzac to Emile de Girardin, then chief editor of the Mode, to which paper he now began to contribute light articles, not to speak of other journals, which were only too glad to receive something from his pen.
This novel, the first signed with his name, Honore Balzac, was published by Canel and Levavasseur in March, 1829, and in December of the same year the "Physiologie du Mariage by a Celibataire," appeared, and excited general attention; though many people, Madame Carraud among the number, were much shocked by it.
From a letter Balzac sent to Levavasseur, while finishing the last pages of the manuscript, it appears that he commenced his task as a jest and completed it with more serious purpose: "I intended to dash off a pleasantry," he told him, "and you came one morning and asked me to do in three months what Brillat-Savarin took ten years to do. I haven't an idea which is not the Physiology.
Werdet, for a number of years his publisher and friend, relates in his Portrait Intime that Balzac, while still in the Lesdiguieres Street garret, had gone one day to Alphonse Levavasseur and offered, in return for a royalty and a cash installment of two hundred francs, to supply him with a book to be entitled: Manual of the Business Man, by a former Notary's Clerk.
At the aerodrome I met and talked with the great pioneers: with Bleriot, fresh from his cross-Channel triumph; with Levavasseur, the designer of the beautiful but ill-fated Antoinette monoplane, which had, through engine failure, let Hubert Latham twice into the Channel during his attempts to make the crossing; with Henry Farman who, fitting one of the first Gnome motors to a biplane of his own construction, flew for more than three hours at Rheims, and created a world's record; and also with M. Voisin, whose biplane was then being flown by a number of pilots.
In 1829 Balzac was introduced by the publisher M. Levavasseur to Emile de Girardin, who became and the connection was life-long what Mme. de Girardin called La Touche, an "intimate enemy." At first all was harmony.
It is the motor that makes aviation possible. It was owing in a very large measure to the introduction of the petrol motor that progress became rapid. Hitherto many had laid the blame of everything on the motor. They had said, "give us a light and powerful engine and we will show you how to fly." The first very light engine to be available was the Antoinette, built by Leon Levavasseur in France.
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