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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: carriage and behavior; if she stooped or rounded her shoulders her
cousin would call to her to be as erect as herself (Sylvie was rigid
as a soldier presenting arms to his colonel); sometimes indeed the
ill-natured old maid enforced the order by slaps on the back to make
the girl straighten up.
Thus the free and joyous little child of the Marais learned by degrees
to repress all liveliness and to make herself, as best she could, an
automaton.
V
HISTORY OF POOR COUSINS IN THE HOME OF RICH ONES
One evening, which marked the beginning of Pierrette's second phase of
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