sode in the history of French
scholarship in the time of Louis XIV. It is to be found in the _Manuel de
diplomatique_ by A. Giry; and above all in a note to the _Oeuvres de
Saint-Simon_ by M. de Boislisle (vol. xiv. pp. 533-558). The bibliography
of Baluze's researches has been made by M. Rene Fage (1882, 1884) and his
_Life_ told by M. Emile Fage (1899). To these we must add an amusing book
by G. Clement-Simon, _La Gaiete de Baluze; documents biographiques et
litteraires_ [v.03 p.0297] (1888). Baluze's will has been published by M.
Leopold Delisle (_Bibliotheque de l'Ecole de Chartes_, 1872); his papers
are now in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, and in the Bibliotheque de
l'Arsenal (_Revue historique_, t. xcviii. p. 309). See also the article by
Arthur de Boislisle in the _Revue des questions historiques_ for October
1908.

(C. B.*)

BALZAC, HONORE DE (1799-1850), French novelist, was born at Tours on the
20th of May 1799. His father, Bernard Francois, never called himself _de_
Balzac and Honore only assumed the particle after 1830. But the father had
equally little right to the name of Balzac at all, for his
birth-certificate has been recently discovered. The true name was "Balssa,"
and this in various forms ("Balsa," "Balsas") has been traced for more than
a century before the novelist's birth as that of a family of day-labourers
or very small peasant proprietors in the parish of Canezac, department of
the Tarn. It is probable that the novelist himself was not aware of this,
and his father appears to have practised some mystification as to his own
professional career. In and after the Revolution, however, he actually
attained positions of some importance in the commissariat and hospital
departments of the army, and he married in 1797 Anne Charlotte Laure
Sallambier, who was a beauty, an heiress, and a woman of considerable
faculty. She survived her son; the father died in 1829. There were two
sisters (the elder, Laure, afterwards Madame Surville, was her brother's
favourite and later his biographer), and a younger brother, Henri, of whom
we hear little and that little not very favourable.

Honore was put out to nurse till he was four years old, and in 1806, when
he was seven, was sent to the _college_ (grammar school) of Vendome, where
he remained till April 1813 as a strict boarder without any holidays. From
this he passed as a day-boy to the _college_ of Tours. His father's
official work was transferred to P