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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac: for Julien Minard, his mother excused him as being confined to his
room with a sore-throat. The absence of Minard senior remained
unexplained, but Madame Minard insisted that they should sit down to
table without him; which was done, Brigitte ordering that the soup be
kept hot for him, because in the bourgeois code of manners and customs
a dinner without soup is no dinner at all.
The repast was far from gay, and though the fare was better, the
vivacity and the warmth of the conversation was far, indeed, from that
of the famous improvised banquet at the time of the election to the
Council-general. The gaps occasioned by the absence of three guests
may have been one reason; then Flavie was glum; she had had an
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