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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Start in Life by Honore de Balzac: "Our bones will be jelly long before that fellow makes his way in the
world," cried Clapart. "You don't know your own child; he is
conceited, boastful, deceitful, lazy, incapable of--"
"Why don't you go to meet Poiret?" said the poor mother, struck to the
heart by the diatribe she had brought upon herself.
"A boy who has never won a prize at school!" continued Clapart.
To bourgeois eyes, the obtaining of school prizes means the certainty
of a fine future for the fortunate child.
"Did you win any?" asked his wife. "Oscar stood second in philosophy."
This remark imposed silence for a moment on Clapart; but presently he
began again.
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