After this passage he adds, "It was in memory of the catastrophe that had happened to Louis's book that in the work with which these studies begin I used for a piece of fiction the title truly invented by Lambert, and that I ave the name (Pauline) of a woman who was dear to him to a young girl who was full of devotion." In effect, if I open La Peau de Chagrin, I find in the confession of Raphael the following words: "You alone admired my Théorie de la Volonté, that long work for which I learned the Oriental languages, anatomy, physiology, and to which I dedicated the greatest part of my time, work which, if I am not mistaken, will complete the studies of Mesmer, of Lavater, of Gall, of Bichat, by opening a new path to the human science; there stops my beautiful life, this sacrifice of all of those days, this silkworm's work, unknown to the world, and whose only compensation could be in the work itself; since the end of childhood until the day that I finished my Theorié, I have observed, learned, written, read without rest, and my life has seemed like a long chore; a gentle lover of Oriental idleness, enthralled with my dreams, sensual, I have always worked, denying myself the delights of Parisian life; a gourmand, I have been temperate; fond of hikes and journeys on the water, hoping to visit foreign countries, still finding a child's pleasure in skipping stones on the water, I stayed constantly seated with pen in hand; talkative, I went to listen in silence to the public courses at the library and the museum; I slept in my solitary bunk like a devotee of the order of Saint Benedict, and women were however my only fantasy, a fantasy that I caressed but which always escaped me!" If Balzac regretted the Traité de la Volonté, he was less sensitive to the loss of his epic poem on the Incas, which began thusly: Oh Inca, oh ill-fated and unhappy king! This unfortunate inspiration earned him, for all of the remaining time that he stayed at the school, the derisory nickname of poet. Balzac, it must be confessed, never had a gift for poetry, at least for meter; his complex thoughts rebelled against rhythm. From these intense meditations, from these truly prodigious intellectual efforts of a child of twelve or fourteen years, there resulted a bizarre malady, a nervous fever, a sort of coma entirely inexplicable for the professors, who were not in on the secret of the readings and the works of young Honoré, who appeared to be so lazy and stupid. No one at the school suspected this precocious excess of intelligence, no one knew that in the cell in which he caused himself to be put daily so as to be at liberty, this student who was thought to be lazy had absorbed an entire library of serious books that were beyond the typical understanding of his age. Let me here tie together several curious lines related to the reading ability attributed to Louis Lambert, that is to say, Balzac: