|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: one derives--as from so many farms--children, some thousands of
francs, and the most laborious happiness that has ever diverted the
heart of man. This fortune and these children, or the children who sum
up everything for him, become the prey of the world above, to which he
brings his ducats and his daughter or his son, reared at college, who,
with more education than his father, raises higher his ambitious gaze.
Often the son of a retail tradesman would fain be something in the
State.
Ambition of that sort carries on our thought to the second Parisian
sphere. Go up one story, then, and descend to the /entresol/: or climb
down from the attic and remain on the fourth floor; in fine, penetrate
 The Girl with the Golden Eyes |