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Werdet, however, connects its origin with the novelist's imprisonment, two years later, in the Hotel de Bazancourt, popularly known as the Hotel des Haricots, which was used for confining those citizens who did not comply with Louis-Philippe's law enrolling them in the National Guard and ordering them to take their turn in night-patrol of the city. Balzac was incurably recalcitrant.
Progress along the whole French front continued in October; Gouraud's right pressed on to a level with, and then in advance of, the American left towards Challerange and Grandpré; his centre advanced towards Machault, and on his left Berthelot took Loivre, Brimont, and forced the passages of the Suippe at Bertricourt and Bazancourt, and of the Aisne at Berry-au-Bac.
They were awaited with eager expectation. An elaborate history of the war had been written by a Baron de Bazancourt, condemned as unfair and unreliable by English statesmen, and severely handled in our reviews. So the wish was felt everywhere for some record less ephemeral, which should render the tale historically, and counteract Bazancourt's misstatements.
Here the German front is the same as they established and fortified it after the Battle of the Marne. It rests on the west side on the Massif de Moronvillers; to the east it stretches as far as the Argonne. It was intended to cover the railroad from Challerange to Bazancourt, a line indispensable for the concentration movements of the German troops.
Signed and sealed the same day, month and year aforesaid. Guiton, Bazancourt, Revier, Barrois, Rabbe, D'Autancourt, Captain Reporter; Molin, Captain Register; and Hulin president.
Cavalry officers and others who seek examples in "Victories and Conquests," in official reports, in "Bazancourt" are too naive. It is hard to get at the truth. In war, in all things, we take the last example which we have witnessed. And now we want lances, which we do not know how to use, which frighten the cavalryman himself and pluck him from the saddle if he sticks anybody.
Eugene Sue could draw, and he made a pen-and-ink sketch of a horse, a horseman and a stretch of seashore, which Balzac inscribed as follows: "Drawn in prison in the Hotel Bazancourt, where we were under punishment for not having mounted guard, in accordance with the decree of the grocers of Paris." A still harsher prison, that of Clichy, very nearly fell to Balzac's lot, a few months later.
Although a good citizen, he energetically refused to fulfill his duties in the national guard, which he deemed unbefitting the dignity of an artist and author. In March, 1835, he had already been detained for seven days in the Hotel Bazancourt; so in order to avoid a similar annoyance in the future he hired his apartment under another name than his own.
The preliminary effort had been to stop the Germans from using the railroad which ran from near the Nort to Varennes through the Forest of the Argonne and across the upper Aisne to Bazancourt.
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