The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: hued cupolas.
In that district the pavements are clean and dry, there is
neither mud nor water in the gutters, grass grows in the chinks
of the walls. The most heedless passer-by feels the depressing
influences of a place where the sound of wheels creates a
sensation; there is a grim look about the houses, a suggestion of
a jail about those high garden walls. A Parisian straying into a
suburb apparently composed of lodging-houses and public
institutions would see poverty and dullness, old age lying down
to die, and joyous youth condemned to drudgery. It is the ugliest
quarter of Paris, and, it may be added, the least known. But,
 Father Goriot |