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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: encumbered with a large family. Though it was no part of the noble
gentlemen's views to solicit favors, he yielded to his wife's wish,
left his country estate, of which the income barely sufficed to
maintain his children, and came to Paris. Saddened by seeing the
greediness of his former comrades in the rush for places and dignities
under the new Constitution, he was about to return to his property
when he received a ministerial despatch, in which a well-known magnate
announced to him his nomination as marechal de camp, or brigadier-
general, under a rule which allowed the officers of the Catholic
armies to count the twenty submerged years of Louis XVIII.'s reign as
years of service. Some days later he further received, without any
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