From Chapter 11:
Thirty years or more ago the late Andrew Lang wrote an article entitled "Enchanted Cigarettes," which began—"To dream our literary projects, Balzac says, is like 'smoking enchanted cigarettes,' but when we try to tackle our projects, to make them real, the enchantment disappears—we have to till the soil, to sow the weed, to gather the leaves, and then the cigarettes must be manufactured, while there may be no market for them after all. Probably most people have enjoyed the fragrance of these cigarettes and have brooded over much which they will never put on paper. Here are some of 'the ashes of the weeds of my delight'—memories of romances whereof no single line is written, or is likely to be written." What Balzac said in his "La Cousine Bette" was—"Penser, rêver, concevoir de belles œuvres est une occupation délicieuse. C'est fumer des cigares enchantés, c'est mener la vie de la courtisane occupée à sa fantaisie." Balzac's cigars became cigarettes in Lang's fantasy. The French novelist seems to have been one of those who praised tobacco without using it much himself. In his "Illusions Perdues" Carlos Herrera, who was Vautrin, says to Lucien, whom he meets on the point of suicide: "Dieu nous a donné le tabac pour endormir nos passions et nos douleurs." M.A. Le Breton, however, in his book on Balzac—"L'Homme et L'Œuvre"—says: "Il ne se soutient qu'à force de café," though he would sit working at his desk for twenty-five hours running.

From Chapter 13:
Although, according to M. Misson, the women of Devon and Cornwall might wonder why the women of Middlesex did not take tobacco, it is certain that London and its neighbourhood did contain at least a few female smokers. Tom Brown, often dubbed "the facetious," but to whom a sterner epithet might well be applied, writing about the end of the seventeenth century, mentions a vintner's wife who, having "made her pile," as might be said nowadays, retires to a little country-house at Hampstead, where she drinks sack too plentifully, smokes tobacco in an elbow-chair, and snores away the remainder of her life. And the same writer was responsible for a satirical letter "to an Old Lady that smoak'd Tobacco," which shows that the practice was not general, for the letter begins: "Madam, Tho' the ill-natur'd world censures you for smoaking." Brown advised her to continue the "innocent diversion" because, first, it was good for the toothache, "the constant persecutor of old ladies," and, secondly, it was a great help to meditation, "which is the reason, I suppose," he continues, "that recommends it to your parsons; the generality of whom can no more write a sermon without a pipe in their mouths, than a concordance in their hands."