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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: damask cloth that is dazzlingly white, a silver-gilt dinner service,
and porcelain of exquisite purity, lighted by transparent candles,
where miracles of cookery are served under silver covers bearing coats
of arms, you must, to be consistent, leave the garrets at the tops of
the houses, and the grisettes in the streets, abandon garrets,
grisettes, umbrellas, and overshoes to men who pay for their dinners
with tickets; and you must also comprehend Love to be a principle
which develops in all its grace only on Savonnerie carpets, beneath
the opal gleams of an alabaster lamp, between guarded walls silk-hung,
before gilded hearths in chambers deadened to all outward sounds by
shutters and billowy curtains. Mirrors must be there to show the play
Ferragus |
