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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: without seriously diminishing the regard they professed in public,
degenerated sometimes in private into sentiments far from charitable.
Thus the Lieutenant-General's wife, having become a Baronne, thought
herself quite as noble as a Kergarouet, and imagined that her good
hundred thousand francs a year gave her the right to be as impertinent
as her sister-in-law Emilie, whom she would sometimes wish to see
happily married, as she announced that the daughter of some peer of
France had married Monsieur So-and-So with no title to his name. The
Vicomtesse de Fontaine amused herself by eclipsing Emilie in the taste
and magnificence that were conspicuous in her dress, her furniture,
and her carriages. The satirical spirit in which her brothers and
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