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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: remains a sunken road, almost an abyss, between the suburbs of the
town and the chateau.
It was on this plateau, with a double exposure to the north and south,
that the counts of Blois built, in the architecture of the twelfth
century, a castle where the famous Thibault de Tircheur, Thibault le
Vieux, and others held a celebrated court. In those days of pure
fuedality, in which the king was merely /primus inter pares/ (to use
the fine expression of a king of Poland), the counts of Champagne, the
counts of Blois, those of Anjou, the simple barons of Normandie, the
dukes of Bretagne, lived with the splendor of sovereign princes and
gave kings to the proudest kingdoms. The Plantagenets of Anjou, the
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