nourishment--the quickening substance is insufficient. And, last of
all, on certain days they plunge into the abysses, lighting up their
depths; they terrify us, and leave us in a soul despair. Our ideas
have their complete system; they are a kingdom of nature, a sort of
efflorescence of which a madman perhaps might give an iconography.
Yes, all attests the existence of these delightful creations I may
compare to flowers. Indeed, their production is no more surprising
than that of perfumes and colour in the plant."

Still, without being a Pascal, Balzac in the first half of his teens,
was evidently not an ordinary child. There was a ferment of thought,
as he said, reacting on itself and seeking to surprise the secrets of
its own being. Fostered by the moral isolation in which he lived
during these six years, his self-analysis grew unwholesome, there
being little or nothing on the physical side to counterbalance it.
Fortunately, the return to saner surroundings occurred before the evil
was irremediable. Running wild for a few months in the open air, he
recovered his natural vivacity and cheerfulness. Every day he went for
a long ramble through one or another of the landscapes of Touraine,
and on his way home enjoyed the magnificent sunsets lighting up the
steeples of his native town and glinting on the river covered with
craft, both large and small. To check his reveries, Madame Balzac
forced him to amuse his two sisters Laure and Laurence and to fly the
kite of his little brother Henry,[*] who had been born while he was at
Vendome.

[*] The name is spelt in the English way.

On Sundays and fete days he regularly accompanied his mother to the
Cathedral of saint-Gatien, where he must have been an observant