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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: whose costume, countenance, and appearance are a long story.
The first, a man of about sixty, wore one of the coats invented,
I believe, for Louis XVIII., then on the throne, in which the
most difficult problem of the sartorial art had been solved by a
tailor who ought to be immortal. That artist certainly understood
the art of compromise, which was the moving genius of that period
of shifting politics. Is it not a rare merit to be able to take
the measure of the time? This coat, which the young men of the
present day may conceive to be fabulous, was neither civil nor
military, and might pass for civil or military by turns. Fleurs-
de-lis were embroidered on the lapels of the back skirts. The
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