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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: dancing at Madame's balls, while they should have been doing the
work done under the Republic and the Empire by young,
conscientious, harmlessly employed energies. It was their place
to carry out at Paris the programme which their seniors should
have been following in the country. The heads of houses might
have won back recognition of their titles by unremitting
attention to local interests, by falling in with the spirit of
the age, by recasting their order to suit the taste of the times.
But, pent up together in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where the
spirit of the ancient court and traditions of bygone feuds
between the nobles and the Crown still lingered on, the
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