|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: Louis XVIII. and Charles X. there were some left who had two hundred
thousand francs a year, a magnificent residence, and a sumptuous train
of servants--well, such a duke could live like a great lord. The last
of these great gentlemen in France was the Prince de Talleyrand.--This
duke leaves four children, two of them girls. Granting that he has
great luck in marrying them all well, each of these descendants will
have but sixty or eighty thousand francs a year now; each is the
father or mother of children, and consequently obliged to live with
the strictest economy in a flat on the ground floor or first floor of
a large house. Who knows if they may not even be hunting a fortune?
Henceforth the eldest son's wife, a duchess in name only, has no
|
