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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: Valois as a respectable and worthy gentleman whom the liberals
calumniated. Luckily for shrewd players, there are people to be found
among the spectators who will always sustain them. Ashamed of having
to defend a piece of wrong-doing, they stoutly deny it. Do not accuse
them of wilful infatuation; such men have a sense of their dignity;
governments set them the example of a virtue which consists in burying
their dead without chanting the Misere of their defeats. If the
chevalier did allow himself this bit of shrewd practice,--which, by
the bye, would have won him the regard of the Chevalier de Gramont, a
smile from the Baron de Foeneste, a shake of the hand from the Marquis
de Moncade,--was he any the less that amiable guest, that witty
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