HONOR DE BALZAC was born at Tours May 16, 1799. His father had been a barrister before the Revolution, but at the time of Honorbs birth held a post in the Commissariat. His mother was much younger than his father, and survived her son. The novelist was the eldest of a family of four, two sisters being born after him and then a younger brother. At the age of seven he was sent to the Oratorian Grammar School at Vendhe, where he stayed for seven years, without making any reputation for himself in the ordinary school course. Leaving Tours towards the end of 1814, th e Balzacs removed to Paris, where Honor6 was sent to private schools and tutors till he had finished his classes, in 1816. Then he attended lectures at the Sorbonne, and, being destined by his father for the law, he went through the necessary lectures and examinations, attending the offices of an attorney and a notary for three years. Then a notary, a friend of his father, offered to HonorC a place in his office, with a prospect of succeeding him in the business on very favourable terms. As against this, however, Balzac protested he would be a man of letters and nothing else. His protest was successful, but only in a qualified way, for although he was allowed to follow his own bent, it was in solitude and with meagre supplies that he did so. His family had left Paris at about this time, and he remained in a sparsely furnished garret with an old woman to look after him. For ten years this period of probation lasted, although he did not remain in the garret the whole of this time. We know, in detail, very little of him during this period. There are a good many of his letters during the first three years 1819-22 t o his elder sister, Laure, who was his first confidante, and later his only authoritative biographer. Between 1822 and 1829, when he first made his mark, there are very few of his letters. What concerns us most is, that in these ten years he wrote very numerous novels, though only ten of them were ever reprinted in the Combdie Humnine, and these all omitted by him in his later arrangements of that stupendous series. He gained little by his writings during these years except experience, though he speaks of receiving sums of sixty, eighty, and one hundred pounds for some of them. One other thing, however, he learnt, which lasted him his life, but never did him the least good this was the love of speculation. Amongst other businesses by which he thought to make money was that of publishing, and afterwards printing and typefounding. I t was with Les Chouans that Balzac made his first distinct success, and in the three years following 1829, besides doing much journalistic and other literary work, he published the following La Maison du Chat-qui-pelote, the Peau dc Chagrin, most of the short Contes Philosophiques, and many other stories, chiefly included in the Sdnes dc la Vie Pvivbc. It cannot be said that he ever mixed much in society it was impossible that he should do so, considering the vast amount of work he did and the manner in which he did it. His practice was to dine lightly about five or six next to go to bed and sleep till eleven, twelve, or one and then get up, and with the help only of enormous quantities of very strong coffee, to work for indefinite stretches of time into the morning or afternoon of the next day, often for sixteen hours at a time. The first draft of his work never presented it in anything like fulness, sometimes not amounting to more than a quarter of its final bulk, then, upon slip proof with broad margins, he would almost rewrite it, making excisions, alterations, and, most of all, additions. There is really very little biographical detail to be stated...
