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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: Montefiore, of the illustrious Montefiore family of Milan (though the
laws of the Kingdom of Italy forbade him to bear his title in the
French service) was one of the handsomest men in the army. This beauty
may have been among the secret causes of his prudence on fighting
days. A wound which might have injured his nose, cleft his forehead,
or scarred his cheek, would have destroyed one of the most beautiful
Italian faces which a woman ever dreamed of in all its delicate
proportions. This face, not unlike the type which Girodet has given to
the dying young Turk, in the "Revolt at Cairo," was instinct with that
melancholy by which all women are more or less duped.
The Marquis de Montefiore possessed an entailed property, but his
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