The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Unconscious Comedians by Honore de Balzac: going home to eat a miserable dinner, and will return about three
o'clock to dress, if she dances in the ballet this evening--as she
will, to-day being Monday. This rat is already an old rat for she is
thirteen years of age. Two years from now that creature may be worth
sixty thousand francs; she will be all or nothing, a great danseuse or
a marcheuse, a celebrated person or a vulgar courtesan. She has worked
hard since she was eight years old. Such as you see her, she is worn
out with fatigue; she exhausted her body this morning in the dancing-
class, she is just leaving a rehearsal where the evolutions are as
complicated as a Chinese puzzle; and she'll go through them again to-
night. The rat is one of the primary elements of the Opera; she is to
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