The Human Comedy: Introductions and Appendix | Page 5

of Louis Lambert,
but making no reputation for himself in the ordinary school course. If,
however, he would not work in his teacher's way, he overworked
himself in his own by devouring books; and was sent home at fourteen
in such a state of health that his grandmother (who after the French
fashion, was living with her daughter and son-in-law), ejaculated:
/"Voila donc comme le college nous renvoie les jolis enfants que nous
lui envoyons!"/ It would seem indeed that, after making all due
allowance for grandmotherly and sisterly partiality, Balzac was actually

a very good-looking boy and young man, though the portraits of him in
later life may not satisfy the more romantic expectations of his
admirers. He must have had at all times eyes full of character, perhaps
the only feature that never fails in men of intellectual eminence; but he
certainly does not seem to have been in his manhood either exactly
handsome or exactly "distinguished-looking." But the portraits of the
middle of the century are, as a rule, rather wanting in this characteristic
when compared with those of its first and last periods; and I cannot
think of many that quite come up to one's expectations.
For a short time he was left pretty much to himself, and recovered
rapidly. But late in 1814 a change of official duties removed the
Balzacs to Paris, and when they had established themselves in the
famous old /bourgeois/ quarter of the Marais, Honore was sent to divers
private tutors or private schools till he had "finished his classes" in
1816 at the age of seventeen and a half. Then he attended lectures at the
Sorbonne where Villemain, Guizot, and Cousin were lecturing, and
heard them, as his sister tells us, enthusiastically, though there are
probably no three writers of any considerable repute in the history of
French literature who stand further apart from Balzac. For all three
made and kept their fame by spirited and agreeable generalizations and
expatiations, as different as possible from the savage labor of
observation on the one hand and the gigantic developments of
imagination on the other, which were to compose Balzac's appeal. His
father destined him for the law; and for three years more he dutifully
attended the offices of an attorney and a notary, besides going through
the necessary lectures and examinations. All these trials he seems to
have passed, if not brilliantly, yet sufficiently.
And then came the inevitable crisis, which was of an unusually severe
nature. A notary, who was a friend of the elder Balzac's and owed him
some gratitude offered not merely to take Honore into his office, but to
allow him to succeed to his business, which was a very good one, in a
few years on very favorable terms. Most fathers, and nearly all French
fathers, would have jumped at this; and it so happened that about the
same time M. de Balzac was undergoing that unpleasant process of
compulsory retirement which his son has described in one of the best

passages of the /Oeuvres de Jeunesse/, the opening scene of /Argow le
Pirate/. It does not appear that Honore had revolted during his
probation--indeed he is said, and we can easily believe it from his
books, to have acquired a very solid knowledge of law, especially in
bankruptcy matters, of which he was himself to have a very close shave
in future. A solicitor, indeed, told Laure de Balzac that he found /Cesar
Birotteau/ a kind of /Balzac on Bankruptcy/; but this may have been
only the solicitor's fun.
It was no part of Honore's intentions to use this knowledge--however
content he had been to acquire it--in the least interesting, if nearly the
most profitable, of the branches of the legal profession; and he
protested eloquently, and not unsuccessfully, that he would be a man of
letters and nothing else. Not unsuccessfully; but at the same time with
distinctly qualified success. He was not turned out of doors; nor were
the supplies, as in Quinet's case only a few months later, absolutely
withheld even for a short time. But his mother (who seems to have been
less placable than her husband) thought that cutting them down to the
lowest point might have some effect. So, as the family at this time
(April 1819) left Paris for a house some twenty miles out of it, she
established her eldest son in a garret furnished in the most Spartan
fashion, with a starvation allowance and an old woman to look after
him. He did not literally stay in this garret for the ten years of his
astonishing and unparalleled probation; but without too much metaphor
it may be said to have been his Wilderness, and his Wanderings in it to
have lasted for that very considerable time.
We know,