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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: learned goldsmiths of his kingdom for the purpose of establishing in
France a unity of weights and measures, as he had already established
the unity of power. Thus, his vast spirit hovered like an eagle over
his empire, joining in a singular manner the prudence of a king to the
natural idiosyncracies of a man of lofty aims. At no period in our
history has the great figure of Monarchy been finer or more poetic.
Amazing assemblages of contrasts! a great power in a feeble body; a
spirit unbelieving as to all things here below, devoutly believing in
the practices of religion; a man struggling with two powers greater
than his own--the present and the future; the future in which he
feared eternal punishment, a fear which led him to make so many
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