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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: rivals. A simple but elegant style of dress, an air of perfect ease,
polite manners, a pleasant voice with a ring in it which found a
response in the hearer's heart-strings, won the good-will of the
family for Monsieur Longueville. He did not seem unaccustomed to the
luxury of the Receiver-General's ostentatious mansion. Though his
conversation was that of a man of the world, it was easy to discern
that he had had a brilliant education, and that his knowledge was as
thorough as it was extensive. He knew so well the right thing to say
in a discussion on naval architecture, trivial, it is true, started by
the old admiral, that one of the ladies remarked that he must have
passed through the Ecole Polytechnique.
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