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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: private audience. The audience, at once granted, was in no sense
private. The royal drawing-room was full of old adherents, whose
powdered heads, seen from above, suggested a carpet of snow. There the
Count met some old friends, who received him somewhat coldly; but the
princes he thought ADORABLE, an enthusiastic expression which escaped
him when the most gracious of his masters, to whom the Count had
supposed himself to be known only by name, came to shake hands with
him, and spoke of him as the most thorough Vendeen of them all.
Notwithstanding this ovation, none of these august persons thought of
inquiring as to the sum of his losses, or of the money he had poured
so generously into the chests of the Catholic regiments. He
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