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Updated: May 7, 2025
He never rested for a moment, he was never indifferent for a moment, his faculties were constantly on the stretch, and Dr. Nacquart remonstrated in vain.
His mental powers were as fertile as ever, but his bodily strength, despite his robust constitution, sometimes broke down under the prodigious fever of creation. Balzac's physician, Dr. Nacquart, obliged him to take a rest. "I am ill," he wrote at this time.
Nacquart put him on a very strict regime. In Paris he once again found his tasks and his financial difficulties faithfully awaiting him, and, faithful in his turn, he set to work again with true "Balzacian fury." But now a new element had entered into his life: his marriage to Mme. Hanska, although still far distant, and dependent upon chance, was at least a settled question, and he left St.
A more probable account tells that Balzac, after one of his fits of gasping, asked Nacquart to say whether he would get better or not. The doctor hesitated, then answered: "You are courageous. I will not hide the truth from you. There is no hope." The sick man's face contracted and his fingers clutched the sheet. "How long have I to live?" he questioned after a pause.
Nacquart is satisfied and I am back at my task and have just finished The Diaries of Two Young Brides and have written Ursule Mirouet, one of those privileged stories which you are going to read; and now I am starting in on a volume for the Montyon prize." Every one of Balzac's novels cost him unimaginable and never ending toil.
His sufferings never made him thin at any period of his life; but now his face was pale and his eyes hollow, and his lifelong friend, Dr. Nacquart, sent him at once to recruit in the air of his native Touraine. After this followed a time of bitter trial for poor Honore.
For the time being, Nacquart, his doctor, conjured it away, as he had done in the case of other seizures from which the patient had suffered. He had known Balzac since boyhood and was well acquainted with his constitution. Unfortunately he could not change the novelist's abnormal manner of living and working. And the mischief was in them.
Anxious to soften the effect of his sentence, Nacquart inquired if his patient had a message or recommendation to give. "No, I have none," was the answer. However, just before the doctor's departure, he asked for a pencil, and tried to trace a few lines, but was too week; and, letting the pencil drop from his fingers, he fell into a slumber.
"Come, doctor," continued the sick man, "do you take me for a child? I can't die as if I were nobody. . . . A man like me owes a will and testament to the public." "My dear patient, how much time do you require for what you have to do?" asked Nacquart. "Six months," replied Balzac; and he gazed anxiously at his interlocutor. "Six months, six months," repeated the doctor, shaking his head.
Houssaye, who came to see him on the 16th of August, found Dr. Nacquart in the room. He relates that Balzac, addressing the latter, said: "Doctor, I want you to tell me the truth. . . . I see I am worse than I believed. . . . I am growing weaker. In vain I force myself to eat. Everything disgusts me. How long do you think I can live?" The doctor did not reply.
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