melancholy struggle for literary supremacy. It was a real disappointment
to me when the servant replied, ill-humoredly, that M. Fauchery was not in
Paris. I asked when he would return. The servant did not know. I asked for
his address. The servant did not know that. Poor lion, who thought he had
secured anonymity for his holiday! A half-hour later I had discovered that
he was staying for the present at the Château de Proby, near Nemours. I
had merely had to make inquiries of his publisher. Two hours later I
bought my ticket at the Gare de Lyon for the little town chosen by Balzac
as the scene for his delicious story of Ursule Mirouet. I took a traveling
bag and was prepared to spend the night there. In case I failed to see the
master that afternoon I had decided to make sure of him the next morning.
Exactly seven hours after the servant, faithful to his trust, had declared
that he did not know where his master was staying, I was standing in the
hall of the château waiting for my card to be sent up. I had taken care to
write on it a reminder of our conversation of the year before, and this
time, after a ten-minute wait in the hall, during which I noticed with
singular curiosity and _malice_ two very elegant and very pretty young
women going out for a walk, I was admitted to his presence. "Aha," I said
to myself, "this then is the secret of his exile; the interview promises
well!"

The novelist received me in a cosy little room, with a window opening onto
the park, already beginning to turn yellow with the advancing autumn. A
wood fire burned in the fireplace and lighted up the walls which were hung
with flowered cretonne and on which could be distinguished several colored
English prints representing cross-country rides and the jumping of hedges.
Here was the worldly environment with which Fauchery is so often
reproached. But the books and papers that littered the table bore witness
that the present occupant of this charming retreat remained a substantial
man of letters. His habit of constant work was still further attested by