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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: but very cheaply? However this may be, the month of March was prodigal
of balls, at which dancing, joking, coarse fun, excitement, grotesque
figures, and the sharp satire of Parisian wit, produced extravagant
effects. These carnival follies had their special Pandemonium in the
rue Saint-Honore and their Napoleon in Musard, a small man born
expressly to lead an orchestra as noisy as the disorderly audience,
and to set the time for the galop, that witches' dance, which was one
of Auber's triumphs, for it did not really take form or poesy till the
grand galop in "Gustave" was given to the world. That tremendous
finale might serve as the symbol of an epoch in which for the last
fifty years all things have hurried by with the rapidity of a dream.
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