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The impulsive energy, the huge boyishness, the appetites physical and mental that age never trained nor chastened were phenomena that all his friends noted, though the manifestations differed. Some lines of Gozlan's in his Balzac in Slippers, form a good sequel to Werdet's account of the Gargantuan dinner.
The novelist had on his war-paint, and was accompanied by a lady, young, pretty, whose name is not revealed to us. Werdet's vis-a-vis was Madame Louise Lemercier, a benevolent blue-stocking of that day, who was a Providence to needy men of letters.
Incorrect in many details which lay outside his own ken, and which he had gleaned from hearsay or books hastily written, Werdet's own book, a familiar portrait of Balzac, is nevertheless a valuable document.
Balzac starts the Chronique de Paris Balzac and Theophile Gautier Lawsuit with the Revue de Paris Failure of the Chronique Strain and exhaustion Balzac travels in Italy Madame Marbouty Return to Paris Death of Madame de Berny Balzac's grief and family anxieties He is imprisoned for refusal to serve in Garde Nationale Werdet's failure Balzac's desperate pecuniary position and prodigies of work Close of the disastrous year 1836.
Lemesle was one Sunday at Werdet's place, engaged in revising the book, when Balzac arrived in an excited state of mind, and sprang on the astonished publisher the demand that their respective positions should be legally specified in writing, and a clean sweep made which should leave him perfectly free.
His prospects on returning to France were no better than when he left. Indeed, they were worse, for Werdet's bad circumstances forced him to pledge himself in several quarters in order to raise some ready money for his immediate wants; and, being pledged, he was bound to produce at high pressure.
There is a warrant out against him on Werdet's account, and his counsellors recommend him to take flight, seeing that the conflict between him and the officers of the Commercial Tribunal is begun.
However, between the fire in the Rue du Pot-de-Fer, Werdet's delinquencies, the failure of the Chronique, and the sums paid back to publishers who had advanced money on arrangements Balzac cancelled to fulfil this new agreement, hardly anything was left; and in 1837 he owed 162,000 francs.
There is frequent discordance in their narration of the same event, and one is often embarrassed in trying to reconcile them. On the one hand, it is certain that Balzac was not always exact in his statements; on the other, Werdet's memory, in the seventies, when he wrote his Portrait Intime of the novelist, was as certainly now and again treacherous.
Distrusting his own powers of persuasion, he enlisted the good offices of Barbier, the late partner of the Rue des Marais printing-house, who was a persona grata with the novelist. Together, they went to the Rue Cassini; and Barbier set forth Werdet's desire. "Very good," replied the great man.
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