It would be intriguing to compare the novella titled William Wilson, in which Edgar Allen Poe describes, with the strange exaggerations of childhood, the old building from the time of Queen Elizabeth where his hero was raised with a companion who was no less strange than Louis Lambert; but this is not the place to make this comparison, thus I must content myself only to point it out. Balzac suffered prodigiously in this college, where his tendency to daydream was assaulted every instant by some inflexible rule. He neglected his studies; but, benefitting from the tacit complicity of a tutor of mathematics, who was at the same time a librarian and occupied in studies that were outside of the realm of ordinary experience, he did not take his lessons and borrowed all of the books he wished. He passed all of his time in secret reading. Soon he became the most punished student in the class. Extra work and detentions occupied his recreation time. For certain schoolchildren, punishments inspire a sort of stoic rebellion, and they oppose the exasperated professors with the same disdainful impassivity that captive savage warriors display toward the enemy who tortures them. Isolation, starvation, and the leather strap will not elicit the least complaint; there are thus between the master and the student some horrible conflicts, unknown to the parents, in which the steadfastness of the martyrs and the skills of the executioner are found equally. Some nervous teachers cannot bear the expressions full of hate, scorn, and threat with which a child of eight or ten years defies them.