ution, but under
it he obtained a post in the commissariat, and rose to be head of that
department for a military division. His wife, who was much younger than
himself and who survived her son, is said to have possessed both beauty
and fortune, and was evidently endowed with the business faculties so
common among Frenchwomen. When Honore was born, the family had not long
been established at Tours, where Balzac the elder (besides his
duties) had a house and some land; and this town continued to be their
headquarters till the novelist, who was the eldest of the family, was
about sixteen. He had two sisters (of whom the elder, Laure, afterwards
Madame Surville, was his first confidante and his only authoritative
biographer) and a younger brother, who seems to have been, if not a
scapegrace, rather a burden to his friends, and who later went abroad.

The eldest boy was, in spite of Rousseau, put out to nurse, and at seven
years old was sent to the Oratorian grammar-school at Vendome, where he
stayed another seven years, going through, according to his own account,
the future experiences and performances of Louis Lambert, but making no
reputation for himself in the ordinary school course. If, however, he
would not work in his teacher's way, he overworked himself in his own by
devouring books; and was sent home at fourteen in such a state of health
that his grandmother (who after the French fashion, was living with her
daughter and son-in-law), ejaculated: _"Voila donc comme le college nous
renvoie les jolis enfants que nous lui envoyons!"_ It would seem indeed
that, after making all due allowance for grandmotherly and sisterly
partiality, Balzac was actually a very good-looking boy and young man,
though the portraits of him in later life may not satisfy the more
romantic expectations of his admirers. He must have had at all times
eyes full of character, perhaps the only feature that never fails in men
of intellectual eminence; but he certainly does not seem to have been in
his manhood either exactly handsome or exactly "distinguished-looking."
But the portraits of the middle of the century are, as a rule, rather
wanting in this characteristic when compared with those of its first
and last periods; and I cannot think of many that quite come up to one's
expectations.

For a short time he was left pretty much to himself, and recovered
rapidly. But late in 1814 a change of official duties removed the
Balzacs to Paris, and when