|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: "It is the smell of the paints," Agathe said to Madame Descoings. "He
ought to give up a business so injurious to his health."
However, all Agathe's anxieties were at this time for her son the
lieutenant-colonel. When she saw him again in 1816, reduced from the
salary of nine thousand francs (paid to a commander in the dragoons of
the Imperial Guard) to a half-pay of three hundred francs a month, she
fitted up her attic rooms for him, and spent her savings in doing so.
Philippe was one of the faithful Bonapartes of the cafe Lemblin, that
constitutional Boeotia; he acquired the habits, manners, style, and
life of a half-pay officer; indeed, like any other young man of
twenty-one, he exaggerated them, vowed in good earnest a mortal enmity
|
