ssors is hard," and that people who refuse to take
their fair share of life's labour must of necessity suffer from
deprivation of their butter, if not of their bread. Her husband was an
old man, and had lost money, and it was most exasperating that Honore
should refuse a splendid chance of securing his own future, and one
which would most probably never occur again. To a good business woman,
who did not naturally share in the boundless optimistic views of M. de
Balzac for the future, the crass folly of yielding to the wishes of a
boy who could not possibly know what was best for him, was glaringly
apparent. However, being a practical woman, when she had done her duty
in making the household--except the placid M. de Balzac--thoroughly
uncomfortable, and had most probably driven Honore almost wild with
suppressed irritation, she embarked on the plan of campaign which was
to bring the culprit back, repentant and submissive, to the lawyer's
desk.

To accomplish this as quickly as possible, it was necessary to make
him extremely uncomfortable; so having furnished his attic with the
barest necessities--a bed, a table, and a few chairs--she gave him
such a scanty allowance that he would have starved if an old woman,
_la mere Comin_, whom he termed his Iris, had not been told to go
occasionally to look after him. In spite of the gaiety of Balzac's
letters from his garret, the hardships he went through were terrible,
and in later years he could not speak of his sufferings at this time
without tears coming to his eyes. Apparently he could not even afford
to have a fire; and the attic was extremely draughty, blasts coming
from the door and window; so that in a letter to his sister he begs
her, when sending the coverlet for which he has already asked, to let
him have a _very_ old shawl, which he can wear at night. His legs,
where he feels the cold most, are wrapped in an ancient coat made by a
small tailor of Tours, who to his disgust used to alter his father's
garments to fit him, and was a dreadful bungler; but the upper half of
his body is only protected by the roof and a flannel waistcoat from
the frost, and he needs a shawl badly. He also hopes for a Dantesque
cap, the kind his mother always makes for him; and this pattern of cap
from the hands of Madame de Balzac figures in the accounts of his
attire later on in his life. It is not surprising that he has a cold,
and later on a terrible toothache; but it _is_ astonishing that,