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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: the appearance of the rooms inhabited by his two neighbors had a
great influence on the feelings and hopes of Hippolyte Schinner.
The house belonged to one of those proprietors in whom there is a
foregone and profound horror of repairs and decoration, one of
the men who regard their position as Paris house-owners as a
business. In the vast chain of moral species, these people hold a
middle place between the miser and the usurer. Optimists in their
own interests, they are all faithful to the Austrian status quo.
If you speak of moving a cupboard or a door, of opening the most
indispensable air-hole, their eyes flash, their bile rises, they
rear like a frightened horse. When the wind blows down a few
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