He faithfully attended the law school courses and
copied legal and notarial documents. Yet all this did not prevent him
from satisfying his literary tastes by attending the lectures given at
the Sorbonne by Villemain, Guizot and Cousin. Nor had he given up his
ambition to write and to become a great man, as he had predicted to his
sisters, Laure and Laurence. Mme de Balzac, severe mother that she was,
had regulated the employment of his time in such a way that he could
never be at liberty. His bed-chamber adjoined his father's study, and
he was required to go to bed at nine o'clock and rise at five, under
such strict surveillance that he could later write, in The Magic Skin,
"Up to the age of twenty-one I was bent beneath the yoke of a despotism
as cold as that of a monastic order." In the evening, after dinner, he
rendered an account of his day, and was then permitted to take a hand
at Boston or whist, at the card-table of his grandmother Mme.
Sallambier. The latter, sympathising with her grandson, who was so
strictly limited in money that he hardly had, from day to day, two
crowns that he could call his own, allowed herself to be beaten to the
extent of moderate sums, which Honore afterwards spent in the purchase
of new books.
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