|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: laughs it to scorn. Madame Guillaume, among other absurdities, had an
excessive notion of the dignity she considered the prerogative of a
married woman; and Augustine, though she had often made fun of it,
could not help a slight imitation of her mother's primness. This
extreme propriety, which virtuous wives do not always avoid, suggested
a few epigrams in the form of sketches, in which the harmless jest was
in such good taste that Sommervieux could not take offence; and even
if they had been more severe, these pleasantries were after all only
reprisals from his friends. Still, nothing could seem a trifle to a
spirit so open as Theodore's to impressions from without. A coldness
insensibly crept over him, and inevitably spread. To attain conjugal
|
