Honore de Balzac Volume 27 (English, Paperback, De Balzac Honore)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: When I had finished my classical studies, my father left me under the tutelage of Monsieur Lepttre; I was to learn the higher mathematics, read law for a year and begin a course of classical study. I believed, as a parlor-boarder and exempt from classes, that there would be a truce between misery and me. But, in spite of my nineteen years, or perhaps on account of them, my father continued the system which had sent me to school in times gone by with insufficient victuals, to college without pocket-money, and given me Doisy as a creditor. I had very little money at my disposal. How attempt anything in Paris without money ? Besides, my liberty was skilfully fettered. Monsieur Lepitre had me escorted to the law schools by an usher who handed me over to the professor, and came to fetch me again. A young girl would have been guarded with less precaution than was suggested for the care of my person by my mother's fears. My parents had good cause to dread Paris. Students are secretly occupied with the same thing that absorbs young girls in their boarding-schools; in spite of everything, the latter will always talk about lovers, and the former aboutwomen. But, in Paris, and at that time, conversation between schoolfellows was influenced by the oriental and sultanesque world of the Palais-Royal. The Palais-Royal was an Eldorado of love, where, at night, ingots slipped away ready coined. There the most virginal scruples vanished, there our inflamed desires could be appeased The Palais- Royal and I, we were two asymptotes verging one toward the other without being able to meet. This is how fate thwarted my attempts. My father had introduced me to one of my aunts who lived on the isle of Saint-Louis, where I had to go and dine on Thursdays and Sundays, conveyed by Madame or Monsieur Lepitre...