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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: protest on the part of loftier and clearer-sighted men who set
their faces against Court jealousies; and the disaffection of the
provincial families, who often came of purer descent than the
nobles of the Court which alienated them from itself--all these
things combined to bring about a most discordant state of things
in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. It was neither compact in its
organisation, nor consequent in its action; neither completely
moral, nor frankly dissolute; it did not corrupt, nor was it
corrupted; it would neither wholly abandon the disputed points
which damaged its cause, nor yet adopt the policy that might have
saved it. In short, however effete individuals might be, the
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