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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: conversation, though she could never bring a sentence to an end
without a wheezing accompaniment from an asthma, to which she would
not confess.
M. de Saintot, otherwise Astolphe, President of the Agricultural
Society, a tall, stout, high-colored personage, usually appeared in
the wake of his wife, Elisa, a lady with a countenance like a withered
fern, called Lili by her friends--a baby name singularly at variance
with its owner's character and demeanor. Mme. de Saintot was a solemn
and extremely pious woman, and a very trying partner at a game of
cards. Astolphe was supposed to be a scientific man of the first rank.
He was as ignorant as a carp, but he had compiled the articles on
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