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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: rare, not to say impossible, to meet with the thirty points of
perfection, described in Persian verse, and engraved, it is said, in
the Seraglio, which are needed to make a woman absolutely beautiful.
Though in France the whole is seldom seen, we find exquisite parts. As
to that imposing union which sculpture tries to produce, and has
produced in a few rare examples like the Diana and the Callipyge, it
is the privileged possession of Greece and Asia Minor.
Esther came from that cradle of the human race; her mother was a
Jewess. The Jews, though so often deteriorated by their contact with
other nations, have, among their many races, families in which this
sublime type of Asiatic beauty has been preserved. When they are not
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