Carraud's sister, who had bought him some enamels, and to whom he
applied to superintend his orders of porcelain. Faithful to his method
of documentation, he visited the sights of the city rapidly, within a
few hours, and such was his keenness of vision and tenacity of memory
that he was able afterwards to describe it all exactly, down to the
slightest details. On the very evening after his arrival at Angouleme
he set forth for Lyons, but the journey was fated not to be made
without an accident, for in descending from an outside seat of the
coach, at Thiers, Balzac struck his knee against one of the steps so
violently that--in view of his heavy weight--he received a painful wound
on his shin. He was tended at Lyons, the wound healed, and he profited
by his enforced quiet to correct Louis Lambert and to add to it those
"last thoughts" which form one of the highest monuments of human
intelligence.

Honore de Balzac installed himself at Aix, near Mme. de Castries. He
was happy, for she had received him with a thousand charming
coquetries; and he had paid his court to her, yet he did not interrupt
his work for a single day! "I have a simple little chamber," he wrote
to Mme Carraud, "from which I can see the entire valley. I force myself
pitilessly to rise at five o'clock in the morning, and I work beside my
window until five-thirty in the afternoon. My breakfast, an egg, is
sent in from the club. Mme. de Castries has some good coffee made for
me. At six o'clock we dine together, and I pass the evening with her."

Balzac lived economically. His chamber cost him two francs a day and
his breakfast fifteen sous. Yet, after having rendered an account of
his expenses to his mother, he was obliged to ask her for money; and he
played her another of his characteristic neat little tricks. At Aix he
had happened to run across a certain Auguste Sannegou, to whom he owed