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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: with sanctity. Always in conformity with the Church and with the
world, she presents a living image of the present day, which seems to
have taken the word "legality" for its motto. The conduct of the
marquise shows precisely enough religious devotion to attain under a
new Maintenon to the gloomy piety of the last days of Louis XIV., and
enough worldliness to adopt the habits of gallantry of the first years
of that reign, should it ever be revived. At the present moment she is
strictly virtuous from policy, possibly from inclination. Married for
the last seven years to the Marquis de Listomere, one of those
deputies who expect a peerage, she may also consider that such conduct
will promote the ambitions of her family. Some women are reserving
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