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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: capital of a journey he had taken to Madrid as secretary to the
embassy of the Duc de Chaulieu, though it was really made, according
to Parisian gossip, in the capacity of "attache to the duchess." How
many times a sarcasm or a single speech has decided the whole course
of a man's life. Colla, the late president of the Cisalpine republic,
and the best lawyer in Piedmont, was told by a friend when he was
forty years of age that he knew nothing of botany. He was piqued,
became a second Jussieu, cultivated flowers, and compiled and
published "The Flora of Piedmont," in Latin, a labor of ten years.
"I'll master De Marsay some of these days!" thought the crushed poet;
"after all, Canning and Chateaubriand are both in politics."
Modeste Mignon |
