[Footnote 130:  Margaret thus gives him back his troth-plight by “stroking” it upon the wand, much as savages and peasants believe they can rid themselves of a disease by rubbing the affected part with a stick or pebble and flinging the latter into the road.]

     [Footnote 131:  Gown.]

     [Footnote 132:  Mold, earth.]

     [Footnote 133:  But and==also.]

HONORE DE BALZAC

(1799-1850)

BY WILLIAM P. TRENT

Honore de Balzac, by common consent the greatest of French novelists and to many of his admirers the greatest of all writers of prose fiction, was born at Tours, May 16th, 1799.  Neither his family nor his place of birth counts for much in his artistic development; but his sister Laure, afterwards Madame Surville,—­to whom we owe a charming sketch of her brother and many of his most delightful letters,—­made him her hero through life, and gave him a sympathy that was better than any merely literary environment.  He was a sensitive child, little comprehended by his parents or teachers, which probably accounts for the fact that few writers have so well described the feelings of children so situated [See ‘Le lys dans la vallee’ (The Lily in the Valley) and ’Louis Lambert’].  He was not a good student, but undermined his health by desultory though enormous reading and by writing a precocious Treatise on the Will, which an irate master burned and the future novelist afterwards naively deplored.  When brought home to recuperate, he turned from books to nature, and the effects of the beautiful landscape of Touraine upon his imagination are to be found throughout his writings, in passages of description worthy of a nature-worshiper like Senancour himself.  About this time a vague desire for fame seems to have seized him,—­a desire destined to grow into an almost morbid passion; and it was a kindly Providence that soon after (1814) led his family to quit the stagnant provinces for that nursery of ambition, Paris.  Here he studied under new masters, heard lectures at the Sorbonne, read in the libraries, and finally, at the desire of his practical father, took a three years’ course in law.

[Illustration:  HON.  DE BALZAC.]

He was now at the parting of the ways, and he chose the one nearest his heart.  After much discussion, it was settled that he should not be obliged to return to the provinces with his family, or to enter upon the regular practice of law, but that he might try his luck as a writer on an allowance purposely fixed low enough to test his constancy and endurance.  Two years was the period of probation allotted, during which time Balzac read still more widely and walked the streets studying the characters he met, all the while endeavoring to grind out verses for a tragedy on Cromwell.  This, when completed, was promptly and justly damned by his family, and he was temporarily