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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: posture, Madame de Cadignan could safely let a malicious smile of
triumph flicker on her lips, a smile such as the monkeys wear after
playing a sly trick--if monkeys smile.
"Ah! I have him," thought she; and, indeed, she had him fast.
"But you are--" he said, raising his fine head and looking at her with
eyes of love.
"Virgin and martyr," she replied, smiling at the commonness of that
hackneyed expression, but giving it a freshness of meaning by her
smile, so full of painful gayety. "If I laugh," she continued, "it is
that I am thinking of that princess whom the world thinks it knows,
that Duchesse de Maufrigneuse to whom it gives as lovers de Marsay,
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