about the same time M. de Balzac was undergoing that unpleasant
process of compulsory retirement which his son has described in one of
the best passages of the _Oeuvres de Jeunesse_, the opening scene of
_Argow le Pirate_. It does not appear that Honore had revolted during
his probation--indeed he is said, and we can easily believe it from
his books, to have acquired a very solid knowledge of law, especially
in bankruptcy matters, of which he was himself to have a very close
shave in future. A solicitor, indeed, told Laure de Balzac that he
found _Cesar Birotteau_ a kind of _Balzac on Bankruptcy_; but this may
have been only the solicitor's fun.

It was no part of Honore's intentions to use this knowledge--however
content he had been to acquire it--in the least interesting, if nearly
the most profitable, of the branches of the legal profession; and he
protested eloquently, and not unsuccessfully, that he would be a man
of letters and nothing else. Not unsuccessfully; but at the same time
with distinctly qualified success. He was not turned out of doors; nor
were the supplies, as in Quinet's case only a few months later,
absolutely withheld even for a short time. But his mother (who seems
to have been less placable than her husband) thought that cutting them
down to the lowest point might have some effect. So, as the family at
this time (April 1819) left Paris for a house some twenty miles out of
it, she established her eldest son in a garret furnished in the most
Spartan fashion, with a starvation allowance and an old woman to look
after him. He did not literally stay in this garret for the ten years
of his astonishing and unparalleled probation; but without too much
metaphor it may be said to have been his Wilderness, and his
Wanderings in it to have lasted for that very considerable time.

We know, in detail, very little of him during the period. For the