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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: degeneracy in which royal races and noble families are wont to end.
For three generations there had been a great Lorrain warrior and a
great Lorrain churchman; and, what is more singular, the churchmen all
bore a strong resemblance in the face to Ximenes, as did Cardinal
Richelieu in after days. These five great cardinals all had sly, mean,
and yet terrible faces; while the warriors, on the other hand, were of
that type of Basque mountaineer which we see in Henri IV. The two
Balafres, father and son, wounded and scarred in the same manner, lost
something of this type, but not the grace and affability by which, as
much as by their bravery, they won the hearts of the soldiery.
It is not useless to relate how the present Grand Master received his
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