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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: the conventional Belval, Floricour, or Derville of the stage, or the
Adalberts and Mombreuses of romance. After all, the names of the
principal characters will be quite as much disguised; for though in
this history the chronicler would prefer to conceal the facts under a
mass of contradictions, anachronisms, improbabilities, and
absurdities, the truth will out in spite of him. You uproot a vine-
stock, as you imagine, and the stem will send up lusty shoots after
you have ploughed your vineyard over.
The "Hotel d'Esgrignon" was nothing more nor less than the house in
which the old Marquis lived; or, in the style of ancient documents,
Charles Marie Victor Ange Carol, Marquis d'Esgrignon. It was only an
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