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Updated: June 21, 2025
Notwithstanding the efforts of the novelist's influential friends, the Count de Lobau, who was responsible for the arrest, showed himself inexorable, and a second day was spent in captivity, which Werdet came again towards evening to enliven.
But the guests assured him they were as ignorant as himself of the stick's whereabouts. Werdet then said he would take a cab and inquire at all the places the novelist had visited in the course of the afternoon. Two hours later he came back, announcing that his jaunt had been useless. At this news, Balzac fainted outright. The loss of his talisman was overwhelming.
Werdet the illustrious Werdet, who, he said, somewhat resembled the Illustrious Gaudissart bought an edition of his philosophic novels for fifteen thousand francs; and, besides two principal books to be mentioned further on, both of which appeared before the close of the year, there were parts of Seraphita and The Cabinet of Antiques which the Revue de Paris was publishing as serials.
To the foregoing he joined a long account of his birth and his presumed title to ancient lineage, and inserted into the bargain a panegyric of Werdet as a man of activity, intelligence, and probity, with whom his relations would be unbroken, since by this same declaration he constituted him henceforward his sole publisher. That was in July 1836.
He wrote from that time till six, only occasionally refreshing himself with coffee from a coffee-pot which was permanently in the fireplace. At six he had his bath, in which he remained for an hour, and his servant afterwards brought him more coffee. Werdet was then admitted to bring proofs, take away the corrected ones, and wrest, if possible, fresh manuscript from him.
He thus lost 3,500 francs, and to add to the calamity, did not receive the sum of 6,000 francs which in the ordinary course of events would have been due to him at the end of the year, when but for this disaster he would have handed over the third dizain to Werdet and an associate.
It was not a pleasant home-coming; as Werdet and Madame Bechet were in utter despair, and reproached Balzac bitterly for his absence, while all his silver had been pawned by his sister to pay his most pressing liabilities.
The "Lys dans la Vallee," on which Werdet had pinned all his hopes, had sold very badly, possibly owing to the hostility of the newspapers. As a climax to all Balzac's miseries, in October Werdet failed. This was doubly serious, as Balzac had signed several bills of exchange for his publisher, and was therefore liable for a sum of 13,000 francs.
"SIR, You called upon me the other day when my head was preoccupied with some writing that I wanted to finish, and I consequently did not very well comprehend what was your drift. To-day, my head is freer. Do me the pleasure to call on me at four o'clock, and we can talk the matter over." Werdet waited nearly a week before he paid the requested visit.
When the repast, lengthened out by a flow of humorous conversation, was at length terminated, the nineteenth-century Johnson asked his Boswell if he had any available cash, as he himself had none. Werdet confessing only to forty francs, the novelist borrowed a five-franc piece from him and thundered out his request for the bill.
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