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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: wear in the afternoon. The moment she is dressed she has to receive
and make visits, and go to the Bois either on horseback or in a
carriage. She must practise the art of smiling, and must keep her mind
on the stretch to invent new compliments which shall seem neither
common nor far-fetched. All women do not succeed in this. It is no
surprise, therefore, to find a young woman who entered fashionable
society fresh and healthy, faded and worn out at the end of three
years. Six months spent in the country will hardly heal the wounds of
the winter. We hear continually, in these days, of mysterious
ailments,--gastritis, and so forth,--ills unknown to women when they
busied themselves about their households. In the olden time women only
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