Balzac's Shorter Stories — Honore de Balzac

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1895. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... PREFATORY NOTICE. Hoitoke De Balzac was born at Tours on May 20, 1799. He was a dreaming and solitary child, refusing to play with his two sisters, and taking no notice of the toys which were given him. There was one exception; he would spend hours in a sort of ecstasy playing on a toy violin, the strains he produced, discordant to others, sounding to him divine melodies. This passion for music he retained all his life; two of his philosophic studies on the subject, " Gambara" and " Massimilla Doni," are among his most delicate work. His faculty for reading showed itself at the age of five, when he read the Holy Scriptures with absorbing interest. He possessed himself with great rapidity of the contents of every book that fell into his hands. Science, philosophy, and religion were his principal study, and he even read dictionaries from end to end. He was sent to the Oratorian College at Veudome; while there, at the age of eleven, he wrote a treatise on the Will, which his teacher, with the true instinct of a school-master, burnt. He would also contrive to be punished with the lock-up, in order to devote himself at leisure to the books he preferred. To his reminiscences of these days are due his marvellous production, Louis Lambert. His memory retained the minutest details, consequently this excessive reading produced a sort of congestion in an undeveloped brain. At the age of fourteen he was apparently so stupefied that it was necessary to remove him from school. Yet he already had glimpses of his future fame. " You will see," he once said to his sisters, "some day I shall be famous." About this time, in 1813, the family removed to Paris, where Honore de Balzac was sent to a wellknown "pensionnat." At the age of eighteen he received the diplomas of "bachelier" a...