according to the talent of the author and the ability of the
publisher,--it becomes a matter of importance. For example: the
Meditations of Lamartine, of which sixty thousand copies were sold; the
Ruins by Volny, etc.

"Accordingly, this is the spirit in which my book is conceived, a book
which the janitor's wife and the fashionable lady can both read. I have
taken the New Testament and the Catechism, two books of excellent
quality, and have wrought my own from them. I have laid the scene in a
village,--and, for the rest, you will read it in its entirety, a thing
which rarely happens to a book of mine,"

for this work Balzac demanded a franc a volume, or seventy-five
centimes at least, and an advance of a thousand francs. This sum was
indispensable if he was to go to Italy. The trip began in October,
under happy auspices, and on the 16th they stopped over at Geneva. From
there Balzac sent his mother two samples of flannel which he had worn
over his stomach. He wanted her to show them to M. Chapelain, a
practitioner of medical magnetism, in order to consult him regarding a
malady which he suspected that he had, and ask him where it was located
and what treatment he should follow. Balzac was a believer in occult
sciences, and once before, during the epidemic of cholera in 1832, he
wrote to M. Chapelain, asking if he could not discover the origin of
the scourge and find remedies capable of stopping it. It was not only
magnetism that interested him, but clairvoyance as well, fortune
tellers and readers of cards, to whom he attributed an acuteness of
perception unknown to ordinary natures.

This enjoyable trip was destined to end at Geneva, so far as Balzac was
concerned. Whether he realised that Mme. de Castries was merely playing