Like his fellow mortals, he was
often most merry when he was most sad.
CHAPTER IX
LETTERS TO "THE STRANGER," 1839, 1840
Sometimes, notwithstanding his affected indifference, Balzac was
provoked by the pleasantries, the fleerings and floutings of satirists
and caricaturists, who, finding so many weak points in his armour--so
much that was ridiculous in his exaggerations, might be excused for
choosing him as a quarry for their wit, if not for the wit's
grossness. In 1839, the _Gazette des Ecoles_ inserted in one of its
numbers a lithograph exhibiting the novelist in the debtors' prison at
Clichy, clad in his monk's gown, and sitting at a table on which there
were bottles of wine and a champagne glass. In his left hand he
grasped a pipe that he was smoking, and his right arm was round a
young woman's waist. Beneath the lithograph was the inscription: "The
Reverend Father Dom Seraphitus, Mysticus Goriot, of the Regular Order
of Clichy Friars, taken in by all those he has himself taken in,
receives amidst his forced solitude the consolations of Sancta
Seraphita (_Scenes of the Hidden Life_, sequel to those of _Private
Life_).
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