aris the year after, and Balzac came
under the teaching of a royalist private schoolmaster, M. Lepitre, and
others. He left school altogether in 1816, being then between seventeen and
eighteen. His experiences at Vendome served as base for much of _Louis
Lambert_, and he seems to have been frequently in disgrace. Later, his
teachers appear to have found him remarkable neither for good nor for evil.
He was indeed never a scholar; but he must have read a good deal, and as he
certainly had no time for it later, much of this reading must have been
done early.

The profession which Balzac's father chose for him was the law; and he not
only passed through the schools thereof, and duly obtained his _licence_,
but had three years' practical experience in the offices of a notary and a
solicitor (_avoue_), for the latter of whom, M. Guillonnet-Merville, he
seems to have had a sincere respect. But though no man of letters has ever
had, in some ways, such a fancy for business, no man of business could ever
come out of such a born man of letters. And when in 1820 (the _licence_
having been obtained and M. Balzac, senior, having had some losses) the
father wished the son to become a practising lawyer in one or another
branch, Honore revolted. His family had left Paris, and they tried to
starve him into submission by establishing him in a garret with a very
small allowance. Here he began to write tragedies, corresponded (in letters
which have fortunately been preserved) with his sister Laure, and, most
important of all, attempted something in prose fiction. The tragedy
_Cromwell_ was actually completed and read to friends if not to others; nay
more, the manuscript exists in the hands of M. Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, the
great authority on Balzac's life and bibliography; but it has never been
published. The novels, _Cocqsigrue_ and _Stella_, proved abortions, but
were only the first of many attempts at his true way until he found it.
Drama he never abandoned; but for him it was always an error.

The garret-period from 1820 to 1822 was succeeded by another of equal
length at home, but before it had finished (1821) he found his way into
print with the first of the singular productions which (and that not
entirely or finally) have taken a sort of outside place in his works under
the title of _Oeuvres de jeunesse_. The _incunabula_ of Balzac were _Les
Deux Hector, ou Les Deux Families bretonnes_, and _Charles Pointel, ou Mon
Cousin de la mai