These preoccupations hindered him somewhat in carrying out his
engagements with publishers and editors, so that he did not always get
the money he counted on. Yet he worked hard. His habit, at this time,
was to go to bed at six in the evening and sleep till twelve, and
after, to rise and write for nearly twelve hours at a stretch,
imbibing coffee as a stimulant through these spells of composition.
What recreation he took in Paris was at the theatre or at the houses
of his noble acquaintances, where he went to gossip of an afternoon.
It was exhausting to lead such an existence; and even the transient
fillips given by the coffee were paid for in attacks of indigestion
and in abscesses which threw him into fits of discouragement. When
suffering from these, he poured out his soul to his sister or Madame
Carraud, complaining in his epistles that his destiny compelled him to
run after fame and deprived him of his chance to meet with the ideal
woman. Madame de Berny, with all her devotion, did not satisfy him
now. "Despairing of ever being loved and understood by the woman of my
dreams," he tragically cried, "having met with her only in my heart, I
am plunging again into the tempestuous sphere of political passions
and the stormy, withering atmosphere of literary glory.
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