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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: men of the world especially were conspicuous for their really artistic
grace and spirit.
Elsewhere in Europe you will find elegant manners, cordiality, genial
fellowship, and knowledge; but only in Paris, in this drawing-room,
and those to which I have alluded, does the particular wit abound
which gives an agreeable and changeful unity to all these social
qualities, an indescribable river-like flow which makes this profusion
of ideas, of definitions, of anecdotes, of historical incidents,
meander with ease. Paris, the capital of taste, alone possesses the
science which makes conversation a tourney in which each type of wit
is condensed into a shaft, each speaker utters his phrase and casts
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