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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: jesuistry of women, painting it with the subtlety peculiar to persons
who have seen much of the world, and which makes statesmen such
delightful storytellers when, like Prince Talleyrand and Prince
Metternich, they vouchsafe to tell a story?
De Marsay, prime minister for some six months, had already given
proofs of superior capabilities. Those who had known him long were not
indeed surprised to see him display all the talents and various
aptitudes of a statesman; still it might yet be a question whether he
would prove to be a solid politician, or had merely been moulded in
the fire of circumstance. This question had just been asked by a man
whom he had made a prefet, a man of wit and observation, who had for a
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