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But Balzac was not staying at Sache for the purpose of playing checkers, and in the same notice M. Salmon tells of his habits of work, on the strength of an account given by M. de Margonne: "He had a big alarm-clock," he writes, "for he slept very well and very soundly, and he set the alarm for two o'clock in the morning.
In June, with the hope that absence would loosen the bonds of affection which united him and Madame de Berny, and with an arriere pensee about another charming personality whom he might meet on his travels, Balzac left Paris for six months, and began his tour by paying a visit to M. de Margonne at Sache.
Madame de Margonne he did not care for: she was, according to his unflattering portrait of her, intolerant and devout, deformed, and not at all spirituelle. But she did not count for much; Balzac went to the house for the sake of her husband.
However, the strain had been too great even for his extraordinary powers, and while walking in the park after dinner with M. and Mme. de Margonne, on the day that letters arrived from Paris with the news that liquidation of the Chronique was necessary, he fell down in a fit under one of the trees.
These absences did not apparently cause any friction; but when, in November, 1831, Balzac went to Sache to stay with M. de Margonne, and then moved on to the Carrauds, he left "Le Maitre Cornelius," which he was writing for the Revue de Paris, in an unfinished and uncorrected condition.
He had no other source of amusement, for he did not care for hunting, and, as to fishing, he made no success of it, for he forgot to pull in the fish after they had taken the hook! "The only games that interested him were those that demanded brain-work," writes a relative to M. de Margonne, M. Salmon de Maison-Rouge, in a vivid account of Balzac's visits to Sache.
Mme. de Castries had left Paris and had asked him to join her at the waters of Aix in September; but, before he could permit himself to take this trip, he must needs have the sort of asylum for work that awaited him in Touraine. M. de Margonne, his host, welcomed him like a son each time that he arrived. He had entire liberty to live at the chateau precisely as he chose.
M. de Margonne often aided him with loans, but in order to keep him as long as possible, he never gave him the money until the moment of his departure. On leaving Paris for he knew not how long, Honore de Balzac entrusted his interests to his mother.
Then, suddenly, Balzac returned to the fierce heat of production; he abandoned his friends and acquaintances, and became invisible for months at a time, buried in his hiding-place at Chaillot, or else taking refuge at the home of M. de Margonne at Sache, or of Mme. Carraud at Frapesle.
Other early and lifelong friendships were with Madame Delannoy, who lent him money, and was in all ways kind to him, and with M. de Margonne, who lived at Sache, a chateau on the Indre, in the beautiful Touraine valley described in "Le Lys dans la Vallee," and who had held Balzac on his knees when a child.
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