pupils, divided according to their ages or attainments into four
classes--_les grands_, _les moyens_, les petits_, and _les minimes_
--and each class had its own class-room and courtyard. Balzac was
considered the idlest and most pathetic boy in his division, and was
continually punished. Reproaches, the ferule, the dark cell, were his
portion, and with his quick and delicate senses he suffered intensely
from the want of air in the class-rooms. There, according to the
graphic picture in "Louis Lambert," everything was dirty, and eighty
boys inhabited a hall, in the centre of which were two buckets full of
water, where all washed their faces and hands every morning, the water
being only renewed once in the day. To add to the odours, the air was
vitiated by the smell of pigeons killed for fete days, and of dishes
stolen from the refectory, and kept by the pupils in their lockers.
The boy who, in the future, was to awaken actual physical disgust in
his readers by his description of the stuffy and dingy boarding-house
dining-room in "Le Pere Goriot," was crushed and stupefied by his
surroundings, and would sit for hours with his head on his hand, not
attempting to learn, but gazing dreamily at the clouds, or at the
foliage of the trees in the court below. No wonder that he was the
despair of his masters, and that his famous "Traite de la volonte,"
which he composed instead of preparing the ordinary school work, was
summarily confiscated and destroyed. So many were the punishment lines
given him to write, that his holidays were almost entirely taken up,
and he had not six days of liberty the whole time that he was at
college.

In addition to the troubles incident to Honore's peculiar temperament
and genius, he had in the winter, like the other pupils, to submit to
actual physical suffering. The price of education included also that
of clothing, the parents who sent their children to the Vendome