seeing that the rules were obeyed and discipline maintained. The pupils
themselves were often cruel to each other.

It was here that Honore de Balzac formed his own character, alone, and
suffered alone, sensitive and repressed child that he was. From the
very first months of the sojourn in the College of Vendome, he was
classed among the apathetic and lazy pupils, among those of whom
nothing could be made, who would never be an honour to the school that
trained them and could be ignored excepting for the purposes of
punishment. Honore had an insurmountable aversion for all the required
tasks, he was indifferent to the charms of Greek themes or Latin
translations, and history alone had the power of stirring him and
awakening his appetite for knowledge. He was habitually sluggish and
stupid in the eyes of his masters, but what a formidable, unknown work
was going on in the brain of this child!

We may picture him in the classroom, during study hour, leaning on his
left elbow and holding an open book with his right hand, while he rubs
his shoes one against the other, with a mechanical movement. What is he
reading? Morality in Action and in Example. His obscure desires are
taking definite form. To become a great man, a hero, one of those whose
names are transmitted from age to age, such from choice will be his own
destiny. He seizes his pen and rapidly writes "Balzac, Balzac, Balzac"
over all the white margins of the book on morality. (This book passed
into the possession of M. Jules Claretie.) Then once more he leans upon
his elbow, gazing out of the window at a corner of verdure which he can
just glimpse, and forthwith he is off again in one of his interminable
reveries.

The harsh voice of his teacher interrupts him: