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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: accompanying these privileged women, no one had yet seen him speak to
them. This silence, a proof either of respect or contempt, as the case
might be; the quantity of baggage belonging to the lady, whom the
commandant sneeringly called "the princess"; everything, even to the
clothes of her attendant squire, stirred Hulot's bile. The dress of
the unknown man was a good specimen of the fashions of the day then
being caricatured as "incroyable,"--unbelievable, unless seen. Imagine
a person trussed up in a coat, the front of which was so short that
five or six inches of the waistcoat came below it, while the skirts
were so long that they hung down behind like the tail of a cod,--the
term then used to describe them. An enormous cravat was wound about
The Chouans |
