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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: never been heard to sing more than two or three times since she came
to Paris. She receives much company, but goes nowhere."
The Observer speaks, you will notice, as an Oracle. His words,
anecdotes, and quotations must be accepted as truths, under pain of
being thought without social education or intelligence, and of causing
him to slander you with much zest in twenty salons where he is
considered indispensable. The Observer is forty years of age, never
dines at home, declares himself no longer dangerous to women, wears a
maroon coat, and has a place reserved for him in several boxes at the
"Bouffons." He is sometimes confounded with the Parasite; but he has
filled too many real functions to be thought a sponger; moreover he
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