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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Domestic Peace by Honore de Balzac: fortunes for uncertain favors. The women who believed themselves
strong enough in their beauty alone came to test their power. There,
as elsewhere, amusement was but a blind. Calm and smiling faces and
placid brows covered sordid interests, expressions of friendship were
a lie, and more than one man was less distrustful of his enemies than
of his friends.
These remarks are necessary to explain the incidents of the little
imbroglio which is the subject of this study, and the picture,
softened as it is, of the tone then dominant in Paris drawing-rooms.
"Turn your eyes a little towards the pedestal supporting that
candelabrum--do you see a young lady with her hair drawn back a la
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