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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: "Why is Michel not here!" exclaimed Daniel, in melancholy accents.
"Perhaps he would not have loved me long," said the princess, shaking
her head sadly. "Republicans are more absolute in their ideas than we
absolutists, whose fault is indulgence. No doubt he imagined me
perfect, and society would have cruelly undeceived him. We are
pursued, we women, by as many calumnies as you authors are compelled
to endure in your literary life; but we, alas! cannot defend ourselves
either by our works or by our fame. The world will not believe us to
be what we are, but what it thinks us to be. It would soon have hidden
from his eyes the real but unknown woman that is in me, behind the
false portrait of the imaginary woman which the world considers true.
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