Happily
the dear Werdet was at hand to arrange the difficulty. Though in the
same case as Buloz, and failing altogether to comprehend the subject
or its treatment, he took over _Seraphita_ in 1835 and published it.
Next to politics, as a means of gaining name and fame more quickly,
Balzac esteemed play-writing. The esteem was purely commercial. In his
heart of hearts he rather despised this species of composition,
entertaining the notion that it was something to be done quickly, if
at all, and utilizable to please the groundlings. Yet, because he saw
that there was money in it, he turned his hand to it, time after time,
and, for long, had to abandon it as constantly. In 1834 he formed a
partnership with Jules Sandeau and Emmanuel Arago, with the idea of
risking less in case of failure. In addition to the tragedy already
spoken of, he tried two others--_The Courtiers_ and _Don Philip and
Don Charles_, the latter modelled on Schiller's _Don Carlos_. The
_Grande Mademoiselle_ was a comic history of Lauzun; and his
_Prudhomme, Bigamist_, was a farce, in which a dummy placed in a bed
seemed to him capable, with a night's working on it, of bringing down
the house.
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