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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: that of the ivy that clung to these chill walls, to that of the
peasants born to labor, who are born, toil, and die unknown to the
world they have helped to feed. A house-owner, after studying the
house with the eye of a valuer, would have said, "What will become of
those two women if embroidery should go out of fashion?" Among the men
who, having some appointment at the Hotel de Ville or the Palais de
Justice, were obliged to go through this street at fixed hours, either
on their way to business or on their return home, there may have been
some charitable soul. Some widower or Adonis of forty, brought so
often into the secrets of these sad lives, may perhaps have reckoned
on the poverty of this mother and daughter, and have hoped to become
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