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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: to a bourgeoise; thither came Blondet, Finot, Etienne Lousteau, Vernou
the feuilletonist, Couture, Bixiou, Rastignac in his earlier days,
Claude Vignon the critic, Nucingen the banker, du Tillet, Conti the
composer,--in short, that whole devil-may-care legion of selfish
materialists of all kinds; friends of Florine and of the singers,
actresses and "danseuses" collected about her. They all hated or liked
one another according to circumstances.
This Bohemian resort, to which celebrity was the only ticket of
admission, was a Hades of the mind, the galleys of the intellect. No
one could enter there without having legally conquered fortune, done
ten years of misery, strangled two or three passions, acquired some
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