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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: was an indispensable condition. Mademoiselle de Fontaine had an ideal
standard which was to be the model. A young man who at the first
glance did not fulfil the requisite conditions did not even get a
second look.
"Good Heavens! see how fat he is!" was with her the utmost expression
of contempt.
To hear her, people of respectable corpulence were incapable of
sentiment, bad husbands, and unfit for civilized society. Though it is
esteemed a beauty in the East, to be fat seemed to her a misfortune
for a woman; but in a man it was a crime. These paradoxical views were
amusing, thanks to a certain liveliness of rhetoric. The Count felt
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