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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: upper, nodding his head as if to add: "Solid people, those; nothing to
be said against them." Ask no further; Practical men settle
everybody's status by figures, incomes, or solid acres,--a phrase of
their lexicon.
Turn to the right, and put the same question to that other man, who
belongs to the species Lounger. "Madame Firmiani?" he says; "yes, yes,
I know her well; I go to her parties; receives Wednesdays; highly
creditable house."--Madame Firmiani is metamorphosed into a house! but
the house is not a pile of stones architecturally superposed, of
course not, the word presents in Lounger's language an indescribable
idiom.--Here the Lounger, a spare man with an agreeable smile, a sayer
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