That which gave some veracity to my jokes was the new house in which Balzac lived, on the Rue Fortunée, in the Beaujon quarter, less populated then than it is today. He occupied a mysterious little house there that would have suited the fantasies of an ostentatious financier. From outside, one saw over the wall a sort of cupola formed by the arched ceiling of a sitting room and fresh paint on the closed shutters.
When one entered this small house, which was not easy, because the master of this dwelling hid himself with extreme care, one discovered a thousand details of luxury and comfort that contradicted the poverty that he affected. He received me however one day, and I could see a dining room adorned with old oak, with a table, a fireplace, some buffets, some sideboards and some chairs of sculpted wood, that would have made Berruguète, Cornejo Duque and Verbruggen envious; a salon of golden yellow damask, with doors, cornices, plinths and window frames of ebony; a library arranged in armoires inlayed with shell and brass in the style of Boule, and whose door, hidden by the shelves, once closed, could not be found; a bathroom in yellow Breccia, with bas-reliefs of stucco; a domed sitting room, whose old paintings had been restored by Edmond Hédouin; a gallery lit from above, that I recognized later in the collection of Le Cousin Pons. There were on the shelves all sorts of curiosities, porcelain from Dresden and Sèvres, horns of crackled celadon, and on the stairway, which was covered with a rug, some great vases from China and a magnificent lantern suspended by a cable of red silk.
"So have you emptied one of the caches of Aboul-Casem?" I said to Balzac, laughing, confronted with these splendors. "You can see well that I was right to suggest that you are a millionaire."
"I am poorer than ever," he responded while taking on a humble and pious air. "None of this is mine. I have furnished the house for a friend that I await. I am only the caretaker and porter of the building."
I quote here his exact words. This response, he made it in passing to many people who were as shocked as me. The mystery was soon explained by the marriage of Balzac to the woman whom he had loved for a long time.