In spite of this strict family discipline, Honore was at this time a
congenial companion, full of high spirits and eager to please. He was
delightfully ingenuous, and laughed heartily at jests at his own
expense, frankly admitting his own blunders. But at times he would draw
himself up in a haughty manner, half in fun and half in earnest: "Oh! I
have not forgotten that I am destined to be a great man!"
Between the copying of two writs Honore de Balzac feverishly continued
his literary efforts. He did not yet know how to make use of the
material he had already amassed, ideas drawn from books and
observations drawn from life; and he tried to measure his strength with
that of the classic writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. In overhauling Balzac's youthful papers, Champfleury has
recovered the greater part of these essays. They show the greatest
variety of interests. Here are five stanzas of wretched verse
concerning the book of Job, two stanzas on Robert-le-Diable, a
projected poem entitled, Saint Louis, the rough drafts of several
novels, Stenie or Philosophic Errors, Falthurne: the Manuscript of the
Abbe Savonati, translated from Italian by M.
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