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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: months of every winter in Paris, bringing back with them its frivolous
tone and short-lived contemporary crazes. Madame is a woman of
fashion, though she looks rather conscious of her clothes, and is
always behind the mode. She scoffs, however, at the ignorance affected
by her neighbors. /Her/ plate is of modern fashion; she has "grooms,"
Negroes, a valet-de-chambre, and what-not. Her oldest son drives a
tilbury, and does nothing (the estate is entailed upon him), his
younger brother is auditor to a Council of State. The father is well
posted up in official scandals, and tells you anecdotes of Louis
XVIII. and Madame du Cayla. He invests his money in the five per
cents, and is careful to avoid the topic of cider, but has been known
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