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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: be used up before many years are gone. Chaptel states that in 1800
there were barely two million acres of vineyard in France; a careful
estimate would give ten million to-day. Divided /ad infinitum/ by our
present system of inheritance, Normandy will lose half her production
of horses and cattle; but she will have a monopoly of milk in Paris,
for her climate, happily, forbids grape culture. We shall soon see a
curious phenomenon in the progressive rise in the cost of meat. In
twenty years from now, in 1850, Paris, which paid seven to eleven sous
for a pound of beef in 1814, will be paying twenty--unless there comes
a man of genius who can carry out the plan of Charles X."
"You have laid your finger on the mortal wound of France," said the
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