i, le 22 aout,
1813. S'adresser a M. Balzac, son pere, a Tours."[*] Thus is summed up
the character of the future writer of the "Comedie Humaine," and there
was apparently nothing remarkable or precocious about the boy, as his
quick temper is his most salient point in the eyes of his masters. It
will be noticed, too, that the "de," about which Balzac was very
particular, and which was the occasion of many scoffing remarks on the
part of his enemies, does not appear on this register.

[*] "Balzac au College," by Champfleury.

Honore was a small boy to have been completely separated from home,
and the whole scheme of education as devised by the Oratorian fathers
appears to have been a strange one. One of the rules forbade outside
holidays, and Honore never left the college once during the six years
he was at school; so that there was no supervision from his parents,
and no chance of complaint if he were unhappy or ill treated. His
family came to see him at Easter and also at the prize-givings; but on
these occasions, to which he looked forward, his sister tells us, with
eager delight, reproaches were generally his portion, on account of
his want of success in school work. In "Louis Lambert" he gives an
interesting account of the college, which was in the middle of the
town on the little river Loir, and contained a chapel, theatre,
infirmary, bakery, and gardens. There were two or three hundred
pupils, divided according to their ages or attainments into four
classes--_les grands_, _les moyens_, les petits_, and _les minimes_
--and each class had its own class-room and courtyard. Balzac was
considered the idlest and most pathetic boy in his division, and was
continually punished. Reproaches, the ferule, the dark cell, were his
portion, and with his quick and delicate senses he suffered intensely
from the want of air in the class-rooms. There, according to the
graphic picture in "Louis Lambert," everything was dirty, and eighty
boys inhabited a hall, in the centre of which were two buckets full of
water, where all washed their faces and hands every morning, the water
being only renewed once in the day. To add to the odours, the air was
vitiated by the smell of pigeons killed for fete days, and of dishes
stolen from the refectory, and kept by the pupils in their lockers.
The boy who, in the future, was to awaken actual physical disgust in
his readers by his description of the stuffy and dingy boarding-house
dining-room in "