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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: ignorance that she dared not join in conversation; for which reason
she was supposed to have little mind. Yet, the mystical education of a
convent had one good result; it left her feelings in full force and
her natural powers of mind uninjured. Stupid and plain as an heiress
in the eyes of the world, she became intellectual and beautiful to her
husband. During the first years of their married life, Balthazar
endeavored to give her at least the knowledge that she needed to
appear to advantage in good society: but he was doubtless too late,
she had no memory but that of the heart. Josephine never forgot
anything that Claes told her relating to themselves; she remembered
the most trifling circumstances of their happy life; but of her
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