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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: his first partner at a dance, when he asks her, "Do you like
dancing?" But, no less, he could be terrible at need, could
unsheathe a formidable sword and make short work of Commandants.
Banter lurked beneath his simplicity, mocking laughter behind his
tears--for he had tears at need, like any woman nowadays who says
to her husband, "Give me a carriage, or I shall go into a
consumption."
For the merchant the world is a bale of goods or a mass of
circulating bills; for most young men it is a woman, and for a
woman here and there it is a man; for a certain order of mind it
is a salon, a coterie, a quarter of the town, or some single
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