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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: hopes by the expectation of future fame. Both regarded the war in its
results, not its action; they simply considered those who died for
glory fools. Chance had made soldiers of them; whereas their natural
proclivities would have seated them at the green table of a congress.
Nature had poured Montefiore into the mould of a Rizzio, and Diard
into that of a diplomatist. Both were endowed with that nervous,
feverish, half-feminine organization, which is equally strong for good
or evil, and from which may emanate, according to the impulse of these
singular temperaments, a crime or a generous action, a noble deed or a
base one. The fate of such natures depends at any moment on the
pressure, more or less powerful, produced on their nervous systems by
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