The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: group of two little boys crowning a little girl, and he promised to
secure for the sculptor a studio attached to the Government marble-
quarries, situated, as all the world knows, at Le Gros-Caillou.
This was a success, such success as is won in Paris, that is to say,
stupendous success, that crushes those whose shoulders and loins are
not strong enough to bear it--as, be it said, not unfrequently is the
case. Count Wenceslas Steinbock was written about in all the
newspapers and reviews without his having the least suspicion of it,
any more than had Mademoiselle Fischer. Every day, as soon as Lisbeth
had gone out to dinner, Wenceslas went to the Baroness' and spent an
hour or two there, excepting on the evenings when Lisbeth dined with
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