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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: genius in Europe, to which Mozart's harmonies, perhaps, do no
more justice than Rossini's lyre. Terrible allegorical figures
that shall endure as long as the principle of evil existing in
the heart of man shall produce a few copies from century to
century. Sometimes the type becomes half-human when incarnate as
a Mirabeau, sometimes it is an inarticulate force in a Bonaparte,
sometimes it overwhelms the universe with irony as a Rabelais;
or, yet again, it appears when a Marechal de Richelieu elects to
laugh at human beings instead of scoffing at things, or when one
of the most famous of our ambassadors goes a step further and
scoffs at both men and things. But the profound genius of Juan
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