I recognize that Nature has treated
me favourably in giving me my heart and my head. Believe in me, dear
sister, for I need some one to believe in me. I do not despair of
doing something one day. I see at present that _Cromwell_ had not even
the merit of being an embryon. As for my novels, they are not up to
much."
How could they be when he supplied them, so to speak, machine-made!
"Citizen Pollet" button-holed him in August 1822 and induced him to
sign an agreement binding him to deliver a couple of these stories by
the 1st of October. Six hundred francs were paid cash down, and the
rest in deferred bills. The second of the couple was the _Curate of
the Ardennes_, which Laure helped him to write.
It surprises at first sight to read that the demand for this cheap
fiction was so great in the early decades of the nineteenth century.
The explanation is that, during the last years of the Empire, the
article had scarcely been in the market at all, so that, in the
Restoration period, which was one of peace and leisure, there was
quite a rush for it. On the whole, Balzac did not manage to hit the
public fancy with his work in this line. The further he went with it
the less he liked it, and such bits of better stuff as he introduced
in lieu of the blood and mystery rather lessened than increased the
saleableness of his books.
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