Oratorian grammar school at Vendôme. as Robb explained: A symbolic inheritance. In the end, his health fails and he is consumed by his own confusion. Their length was not predetermined. His preferred method was to eat a light meal at five or six in the afternoon, then sleep until midnight. Although Balzac was "by turns a hermit and a vagrant", he managed to stay connected to the social world which nourished his writing. His health deteriorated on the way, and Ewelina wrote to her daughter about Balzac being "in a state of extreme weakness" and "sweating profusely". Balzac sought to present his characters as real people, neither fully good nor fully evil, but fully human. As he did with the people around him, Balzac studied these places in