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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: Saint-Michel, are not less celebrated; but no writer, no painter has
represented the face of that terrible monarch in his last years,--a
sickly, hollow, yellow and brown face, all the features of which
expressed a sour craftiness, a cold sarcasm. In that mask was the
forehead of a great man, a brow furrowed with wrinkles, and weighty
with high thoughts; but in his cheeks and on his lips there was
something indescribably vulgar and common. Looking at certain details
of that countenance you would have thought him a debauched husbandman,
or a miserly pedler; and yet, above these vague resemblances and the
decrepitude of a dying old man, the king, the man of power, rose
supreme. His eyes, of a light yellow, seemed at first sight extinct;
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