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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: admiration. Flattery and a lover are proofs of power. And what
is power without recognition? Nothing. If the prettiest of
women were left alone in a corner of a drawing-room, she would
droop. Put her in the very centre and summit of social grandeur,
she will at once aspire to reign over all hearts--often because
it is out of her power to be the happy queen of one. Dress and
manner and coquetry are all meant to please one of the poorest
creatures extant--the brainless coxcomb, whose handsome face is
his sole merit; it was for such as these that women threw
themselves away. The gilded wooden idols of the Restoration, for
they were neither more nor less, had neither the antecedents of
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