The time and money he gave to this lost cause were all the more
meritorious as his own concerns demanded greater attention than ever.
A new departure had occurred in journalism. The appearance of certain
cheaper newspapers necessitated a change in the _roman feuilleton_;
and the _Presse_ and _Siecle_, which had inaugurated the reform, and
to both of which Balzac contributed fiction, laid down the principle
that they would print only short tales complete in three or four
numbers. This was hard on the novelist. For him to compress a story
within artificial limits determined by an editor was a task even more
difficult than to write a play.
It must have been the desire to escape from such servitude which
induced him to launch into another adventure with a journal of his
own. The _Revue Parisienne_, which he founded in July 1840, was not a
newspaper but a magazine, intended to supply the public, at a
reasonable price, with tales, novels, poetry, and articles of
criticism both literary and political, and to give the same public for
their money more than three times as much matter as they would get in
other reviews. The success of Alphonse Karr's monthly _Guepes_, which
was reported to be selling extraordinarily, encouraged him to believe
that his own fame, wider spread in 1839 than in 1836, and greater,
would suffice to assure a similar result.
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