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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: Try to decide between him who scribbles jokes on Egyptian obelisks,
and him who has "bostoned" for twenty years with Du Bousquier,
Monsieur de Valois, Mademoiselle Cormon, the judge of the court, the
king's attorney, the Abbe de Sponde, Madame Granson, and tutti quanti.
If the daily and punctual return of the same steps to the same path is
not happiness, it imitates happiness so well that men driven by the
storms of an agitated life to reflect upon the blessings of
tranquillity would say that here was happiness ENOUGH.
To reckon the importance of Mademoiselle Cormon's salon at its true
value, it will suffice to say that the born statistician of the
society, du Bousquier, had estimated that the persons who frequented
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