|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: transformed the chair on which she sat into an imperial throne.
Monsieur de Fontaine discovered too late how utterly the education of
the daughter he loved had been ruined by the tender devotion of the
whole family. The admiration which the world is at first ready to
bestow on a young girl, but for which, sooner or later, it takes its
revenge, had added to Emilie's pride, and increased her self-
confidence. Universal subservience had developed in her the
selfishness natural to spoilt children, who, like kings, make a
plaything of everything that comes to hand. As yet the graces of youth
and the charms of talent hid these faults from every eye; faults all
the more odious in a woman, since she can only please by self-
|
