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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: are sent up annually by the most progressive portion of the
population; and of these the Government takes one-third, puts them in
sacks called the Ecoles, and shakes them up together for three years.
Though every one of these young plants represents vast productive
power, they are made, as one may say, into cashiers. They receive
appointments; the rank and file of engineers is made up of them; they
are employed as captains of artillery; there is no (subaltern) grade
to which they may not aspire. Finally, when these men, the pick of the
youth of the nation, fattened on mathematics and stuffed with
knowledge, have attained the age of fifty years, they have their
reward, and receive as the price of their services the third-floor
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