|
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: kindly, so graceful in its easy "sans-souci," which absorbs into its
own Bohemian life all who allow themselves to be caught in the frantic
whirl of its gay spirits, its eager abandonment, and its contemptuous
indifference to the future.
Though this Bohemian life displayed itself in her house in tumultuous
disorder, amid the laughter of artists of every description, the queen
of the revels had ten fingers on which she knew better how to count
than any of her guests. In that house secret saturnalias of literature
and art, politics and finance were carried on; there, desire reigned a
sovereign; there, caprice and fancy were as sacred as honor and virtue
to a bourgeoise; thither came Blondet, Finot, Etienne Lousteau, Vernou
|