After he had passed his examinations in law, and the question arose of a choice of career, his father announced to him the one which he had decided Honore should adopt: he should be a notary. One of their friends was willing to turn over his practice to him after a few years of apprenticeship. It was an honourable position, remunerative and much sought after. Honore de Balzac had arrived at the turning point of his existence. Here were two avenues before him, the first that of a notary, paved with gold, where he might reap honour, profit and esteem, a straight and easy route, restful and without unknown dangers; the second, lying outside of all the paths traced by society, and offering to those who entered upon it only a nebulous future, full of perils, uncertain combats, care, privation and want. It is a road which one must hew out for oneself, through the obscure forest of art and ideas, and many are the imprudent who have over-estimated their strength and perished there in the midst of indifference and contempt.
Everything urged Balzac towards a notary's career. The family fortune had diminished; the father had been placed upon the retired list, he had lost money in investments, it was absolutely necessary to cut down expenses, and Honore, as the oldest son, was expected to make a position for himself rapidly. Why did he hesitate to come to a decision and gratefully accept the proposition made by his father? The family brought pressure to bear, yet Honore continued to say, "No, I will not be a notary." It was considered nothing less than scandalous. His mother reproached him for his ingratitude and warned him that he was driving her to despair. She was ashamed of a son who repaid the sacrifices they had made to educate him with such a want of proper feeling. Yet Honore persisted in his attitude of revolt, Honore, who throughout his childhood and youth had hitherto always submitted docilely to all the rules and commands of the family. "No, I will not be a notary,--I wish to become an author,--a celebrated author." They laughed at him. What promise of talent had he ever given to justify such absurd pretensions? Was it those wretched scribblings which had formerly caused so much merriment that now inspired him with such pride? Very well! he must simply get over it. His little absurdities were all very funny, when he was at the age of frivolity and nonsense, but now that he had come to years of discretion, it was time he learned that life was not play: "So, my boy, you will be a notary." "No,"repeats Honore, "I shall not." His black eyes flash, his thick lips tremble, and he pleads his cause before the family tribunal, the cause of his genius which no one else has recognised and which he himself perceives only confusedly within him.
"From childhood I looked upon myself as foreordained to be a great man," he wrote in The Magic Skin, "I struck my brow like Andre Chenier, 'There is something inside there!' I seemed to feel within me a thought to be expressed, a system to be established, a science to be expounded.
I often thought of myself as a general, or an emperor. Sometimes I was Byron, and then again I was nothing. After having sported upon the pinnacle of human affairs, I discovered that all the mountains, all the real difficulties still remained to be surmounted. The measureless self-esteem which seethed within me, the sublime belief in destiny, which perhaps evolves into genius if a man does not allow his soul to be torn to tatters by contact with business interests, as easily as a sheep leaves its wool on the thorns of the thicket through which it passes,--all this was my salvation. I wished only to work in silence, to crown myself with glory, the one mistress whom I hoped some day to attain."What he actually said lacked the precision and the form of these phrases, but he was eloquent, and his father, who had no reason to suppose that he had an imbecile for a son, was the first to yield, in a measure, to his arguments. His mother still resisted, frightened at the risks he must run, far from convinced by his words, and without confidence in the future. Nevertheless, she was forced to yield. It was decided to try an experiment,--but it was to be kept a close secret, because their friends would never have finished laughing at such parental weakness. Two years were accorded to Honore, within which to give some real proof of his talent. Hereupon he became joyously expansive, he was sure that he would triumph, that he would bring back a masterpiece to submit to the judgment of his assembled family and friends. But, since a failure was possible and they wished to guard themselves from such a mortification, his acquaintances were to be told that Honore was at Albi, visiting a cousin. Furthermore, in the hope of bringing him back to the straight path, through the pinch of poverty, his mother insisted that nothing more should be granted him than an annual allowance of fifteen hundred francs (less than 300 dollars), and that he should meet all his needs out of this sum. Honore would have accepted a bare and penniless liberty with equal fervour and enthusiasm.
For the sake of economy, the Balzac family decided upon a provincial life, and removed to Villeparisis, in the department of Seine-et-Oise, where they secured a small yet comfortable bourgeois house. This was in the early months of 1819; Honore, at the age of twenty-one, was left alone in Paris.
They had installed him in a garret, high up under a mansarde roof, in the Rue Lesdiguieres, No. 9, and it was he himself who chose this lodging because of the ease with which he could reach the Arsenal library during the daytime, while at night he would stay at home and work.
