The nineteenth-century French writer Honoré de Balzac supposedly consumed fifty cups of coffee per day. Based on that information, and facts I vaguely remember from his Wikipedia page, here are what his thoughts probably were following each cup.
No. 1: Ah! What a great way to start my day, by drinking a cup of delicious hot coffee.
No. 2: Coffee two, down the ol’ hatch and into my stomach!
No. 3: I love writing, but I also love drinking fifty cups of coffee every single day.
No. 4: Rats! Put too much cream in that one. Luckily I have forty-five opportunities to right this wrong.
No. 5: Too much cream again. I will learn from this.
No. 6: Yikes. This time I didn’t add enough cream.
No. 7: Nailed the cream ratio, baby!
No. 8: I should have written down the ratio.
No. 9: “The more a man judges, the less he loves”—that’s from my 1829 work “The Physiology of Marriage.” I wrote it about coffee, and I should have remembered it when I was complaining about the cream.
No. 10: Well, that’s lucky cup No. 10! Time to get out of bed, and do what I do best: writing stories and tales.
No. 11: Maybe just one more cup before I get out of bed. Ha, ha.
No. 12: Maybe just one more cup before I get out of bed. Ha, ha.
No. 13: I’m out of bed, in my kitchen, and imbibing more of the terrific drink known as coffee.
No. 14: Without the wonderful coffee bean, I doubt I would have the energy to write the multivolume collection of fiction I am most famous for, “La Comédie humaine.”
No. 15: The bean’s juice gives me my power, and allows me to write the good sentences.
No. 16: I need the strength from the bean in order for my imagination to create wonders.
No. 17: Ah! I drank that one too fast, and it hurt my head, the source of the wonders.
No. 18: You’d think I’d have drunk this one slower, but nope. Head feels even worse.
No. 19: I drank this one fast, too, thinking it would cancel out the other ones. I was right!
No. 20: There is nothing quite like drinking a piping hot cup of coffee without getting a horrible headache from it.
No. 21: Who is making all this coffee?
No. 22: My stomach sounds like the angriest sea in the entire world.
No. 23: I just drank a cup of coffee.
No. 24: I just drank another cup of coffee.
No. 25: I am halfway through my fifty cups—unfortunately it is around this time that I begin to tire slightly of the taste. Oh well! I need to push through, if I want to write the good words.
No. 26: Is it really only 11 A.M.?
No. 27: Sometimes I think I am overdoing it.
No. 28: I seriously wonder if this excessive coffee consumption will have an adverse effect on my health.
No. 29: I drink fifty cups of coffee every day to be the founder of realism in European literature—but at what cost?
No. 30: Maybe someone else can be the pioneer of this movement.
No. 31: Yeah! Let’s call this hypothetical person something French, something French like “Flaubert.”
No. 32: Oh, I can’t take that chance, what if this “Flaubert” never exists?
No. 33: I am making a conscious choice to harm myself by overindulging in coffee.
No. 34: All of this coffee will absolutely kill me.
No. 35: There is no way my heart does not give out soon. I will die at fifty-one, because of the horrible liquefied coffee bean.
No. 36: The bean has given me everything and it will take everything away.
No. 37: The bean is crushed to make the coffee, as I am made by coffee.
No. 38: El café es negro como la noche, y la noche es negro como mi alma.
No. 39: No puedo sobrevivir sin el dulce sabor del café.
No. 40: The bean is my father, and I am the son of the bean.
No. 41: Wait a minute! Was I just speaking Spanish? I didn’t know I could do that. Coffee really is incredible.
No. 42: My heart beats so fast, sometimes I think it’s going to bust out of my ribcage.
No. 43: Hold on a minute. Is the ribcage a prison for the heart?
No. 44: Yes! The ribcage is a prison for the heart, and the heart is the prisoner inside the ribcage!
No. 45: I think the coffee is starting to kick in, allowing me to create the good words I am famous for!
No. 46: And all the organs, blood, and bones inside us, they are prisoners, too! Their prison is the skin.
No. 47: Finally, there’s the mind—the greatest prisoner of all! This is because the skull that surrounds the mind is very hard.
No. 48: It now occurs to me that this isn’t a very good idea. I should maybe wait until I have consumed fifty cups before I start having ideas.
No. 49: One day I will figure out who makes all this coffee for me.
No. 50: That’s fifty! And wouldn’t you know it, I am starting to have a really good idea about depicting French society in a realistic way, like usual! It’s only 11:30 in the morning, but I am already excited for tomorrow, when I get to drink more of the beverage I love, coffee.
