"You are doing nothing, M. Balzac."

The boy falls back from his dreams into the classroom. The reproof has
hurt him keenly. He fixes his magnetic black eyes upon the teacher. Is
it bitterness, disdain or anger towards him for having destroyed those
fruitful meditations? At all events, the teacher feels something like a
shock. He says:

"If you look at me like that, M. Balzac, you will receive the ferrule."

The ferrule! The thong of leather that cut so painfully when it fell
with dreaded rhythm, one, two, three, on the tips of the fingers or the
palm of the hand.

Punishments rained heavily on Balzac, the bad pupil, who seems to have
been perpetually in disgrace over his tasks and lessons. These
punishments included the extra copying of lines in such numbers that he
has been declared the inventor of the three-pointed pen; and then there
was imprisonment in the dormitory, "the wooden breeches," as it was
called in the college, and where he remained for weeks at a time.
Whether he suffered from these punishments and from the contempt of his
teachers, Honore at least never complained; for whatever left his mind
free to follow its own self-cultivation was a welcome opportunity.

He had a tutor, the librarian of the rich Oratorian library, who during
those rare recreation hours, when he had no extra lines to copy, was
supposed to give him special lessons in mathematics. But by a tacit
agreement the teacher paid no attention to the pupil, and the latter
was permitted to read and carry away any books which took his fancy. In