pardon, not the egoism of the man (for he has none), but the egoism of
the thinker and worker."

Towards the middle of July he left Sache in order to go to Angouleme,
to visit Mme. Carraud, whose husband had been appointed Inspector of
the Powder Works, just outside the town. He arrived there on the 17th,
intending to stay five weeks and happy to have reached this friendly
asylum. Mme. Carraud was one of the women who had the most faith in
Balzac; she was the recipient of his confidences, even the most
delicate ones; and when his conduct displeased her she did not hesitate
to take him to task. In her home Honore was treated as a son of the
family, and Commander Carraud also welcomed him with cordial affection.
In their house, just as at Sache, he kept on with his work, for "I must
work" was his life-long cry, which he sometimes uttered blithely, in
the luminous joy of creation, and sometimes with a horrible
breathlessness, as though he was gradually being crushed by the weight
of his superhuman task. But he never succumbed. From the moment of his
arrival at the Powder Works, notwithstanding the fatigue of the
journey, he hardly gave himself time to clasp the hands of his friends
before he plunged into the concluding chapters of Louis Lambert; and
even when he was not writing he gave himself no rest, but set about the
preparation of new works. He led an even more cloistered life here than
at Sache, interrupting all correspondence excepting business letters to
his mother. For he was bent upon gaining two things, money and fame.
Besides, there were the corrections to be made in The Chouans, in the
fourth volume of the Philosophic Tales, and he was writing The Battle
(which never was published), the Contes Drolatiques, the Studies of
Women, the Conversations between Eleven o'Clock and Midnight, La
Grenadiere (written in one night), and The Accursed Child, and at the
same time was planning The Country Doctor, one of his most important