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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: days. A wound which might have injured his nose, cleft his forehead,
or scarred his cheek, would have destroyed one of the most beautiful
Italian faces which a woman ever dreamed of in all its delicate
proportions. This face, not unlike the type which Girodet has given to
the dying young Turk, in the "Revolt at Cairo," was instinct with that
melancholy by which all women are more or less duped.
The Marquis de Montefiore possessed an entailed property, but his
income was mortgaged for a number of years to pay off the costs of
certain Italian escapades which are inconceivable in Paris. He had
ruined himself in supporting a theatre at Milan in order to force upon
a public a very inferior prima donna, whom he was said to love madly.
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