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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: acknowledgment of the infinite pains which he gave himself; his wife
thought his luxury and good taste her natural right, and she felt no
gratitude for the fact that her pride and self-love had never
suffered. It was thus in everything. Kindness has its mishaps; often
it is attributed to temperament; people are seldom willing to
recognize it as the secret effort of a noble soul.
About this period of her life, Madame Felix de Vandenesse had attained
to a degree of worldly knowledge which enabled her to quit the
insignificant role of a timid, listening, and observing supernumerary,
--a part played, they say, for some time, by Giulia Grisi in the
chorus at La Scala. The young countess now felt herself capable of
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