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