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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: departs. All move up one place, and so each in turn is next the
sovereign.
This futile gossip, or serious colloquy, these elegant trivialities of
Italian life, inevitably imply some general intimacy. The lady may be
in full dress or not, as she pleases. She is so completely at home
that a stranger who has been received in her box may call on her next
day at her residence. The foreign visitor cannot at first understand
this life of idle wit, this /dolce far niente/ on a background of
music. Only long custom and keen observation can ever reveal to a
foreigner the meaning of Italian life, which is like the free sky of
the south, and where a rich man will not endure a cloud. A man of rank
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