19 come up to Paris from
Touraine, in which province his family lived, to seek his fortune as a
man of letters. The episode is a strange and gloomy one. His vocation
for literature had not been favorably viewed at home, where money was
scanty; but the parental consent, or rather the parental tolerance, was
at last obtained for his experiment. The future author of the "Pere
Goriot" was at this time but twenty years of age, and in the way of
symptoms of genius had nothing but a very robust self-confidence to
show. His family, who had to contribute to his support while his
masterpieces were a-making, appear to have regretted, the absence of
further guarantees. He came to Paris, however, and lodged in a garret,
where the allowance made him by his father kept him neither from
shivering nor from nearly starving. The situation had been arranged in a
way very characteristic of French manners. The fact that Honore had gone
to Paris was kept a secret from the friends of the family, who were told
that he was on a visit to a cousin in the South. He was on probation,
and if he failed to acquire literary renown, his excursion should be
hushed up. This pious fraud did not contribute to the comfort of the
young scribbler, who was afraid to venture abroad by day lest he should
be seen by an acquaintance of the family. Balzac must have been at this
time miserably poor. If he goes to the theatre, he has to pay for the
pleasure by fasting. He wishes to see Talma (having to go to the play,
to keep up the fiction of his being in the South, in a latticed box). "I
shall end by giving in.... My stomach already trembles." Meanwhile he
was planning a tragedy of "Cromwell," which came to nothing, and writing
the "Heritiere de Birague," his first novel, which he sold for one
hundred and sixty dollars. Through these early letters, in spite of his
chilly circumstances, there flows a current of youthful ardor, gayety,
and assurance. Some passages in his letters to his sister are a sort of
explosion of animal spirits:

Ah, my sister, what torments it gives us--the love of glory!
Long live grocers! they sell all day, count their gains in the
evening, take their pleasure from time to time at some
frightful melodrama--and behold them happy! Yes, but they pass
their time between cheese and soap. Long live rather men of
letters! Yes, but these are all beggars in pocket, and rich
only in conceit. Well, let us leave them all