Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustration. See 46859-h.htm or 46859-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46859/46859-h/46859-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46859/46859-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/cu31924027500341 Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). [Illustration: Drawing of Balzac] BALZAC by EDGAR EVERTSON SALTUS Boston Houghton, Mifflin and Company New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1884 Copyright, 1884. By Edgar Evertson Saltus. All rights reserved. The Riverside Press, Cambridge. Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE VAGARIES OF GENIUS 5 CHAPTER II. THE COMÉDIE HUMAINE 39 CHAPTER III. THE BUSKIN AND THE SOCK 69 CHAPTER IV. THE CHASE FOR GOLD 108 CHAPTER V. THE THINKER 140 CHAPTER VI. BIBLIOGRAPHY 165 BALZAC. * * * * * CHAPTER I. THE VAGARIES OF GENIUS. “Great minds are bravely eccentric; they scorn the beaten track.”—GOLDSMITH. In the city of Tours, in whose gabled streets there lingers still some memory of la belle Impéria, Honoré de Balzac was born on the 20th of May, 1799. His childhood was in no wise extraordinary, save for the avidity with which he read the Bible and the keen delight which he took in the possession of a little red violin. He was indifferent to romps and games, and when not lost in the mysterious depths of the Scriptures he played by the hour on his fiddle, and extracted therefrom an enjoyment which was almost sensual in its intensity. His parents were well-considered people, in easy circumstances. Honoré was their first-born, and to him were subsequently given two sisters and a brother, concerning whom only a passing mention need be made. His eldest sister, Laure, became the wife of M. de Surville, a civil engineer, survived her illustrious brother, and published his letters, together with a weak sketch of his life; his second sister also married, but died at an early age; while his brother Henri sought his fortune, after the manner of younger sons, in the colonies, failed to find it, and was otherwise entirely uninteresting.