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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: more or less good position in life, and at any rate her comfort is
assured. I know the world. Girls, mammas, and grandmammas are all of
them hypocrites when they fly off into sentiment over a question of
marriage. Nobody really thinks of anything but a good position. If a
mother marries her daughter well, she says that she has made an
excellent bargain.' Here Rastignac unfolded his theory of marriage,
which to his way of thinking is a business arrangement, with a view to
making life tolerable; and ended up with, 'I do not ask to know your
secret, Malvina; I know it already. Men talk things over among
themselves, just as you women talk after you leave the dinner-table.
This is all I have to say: Marry. If you do not, remember that I
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