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1. Origins and Atavism

THERE is a certain pleasure in looking closely at the vestiges of
an atavism. Despite the necessary inconsistencies, one always
hopes to discover in them the hidden influences that shaped a
destiny. To be the only one of eleven brothers and sisters to
know how to read and write -- to start as a minor clerk to the
scrivener of the neighboring town after having been the shep-
herd of his parents' flocks -- then to leave his family abruptly
in obedience to an ambition as burning as the sun of the Albi-
gensian countryside -- to leave home before his seventeenth birth-
day, on foot, with a staff in his hand and heavy hobnailed shoes
on his feet, his pack on his back, as he traveled the King's
Highway in the direction of Paris -- there and still only twenty
years old, to become the clerk of the royal prosecutor and then
to win the post of secretary of the King's Council -- such was
the Odyssey of Bemard-François Balzac, the father of Honoré
de Balzac. 1 He was born in 1746 in the village of La Nougayrié

____________________
1 It is hard not to believe that Balzac had his father in mind when,
with these colorful touches, he limned the silhouette of César Birotteau
as he left his native Touraine behind him. "He was the last child of the
family. . . . When at the age of fourteen César had learned to read, write
and do sums, he left the town and came to Paris with a louis in his
pocket, seeking his fortune. . . . At that time César possessed a pair of
hobnailed shoes, blue breeches and stockings, a flowered vest, a peasant's
jacket, three heavy shirts of good linen, and his traveler's cudgel. Although
his hair was cut in the fashion of the choirboys, he had the strong back
of the peasant of Touraine; if sometimes he was guilty of the laziness cus-
tomary in the countryside, he made up for it by his desire to make a for-
tune. . . ." It is worth noting that Bernard François Balzac owed his

-3-

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Publication Information: Book Title: Balzac and the Human Comedy. Contributors: Philippe Bertault - author, Richard Monges - transltr. Publisher: New York University Press. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1963. Page Number: 3.
    
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