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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: This taste, severely blamed by some historians, was really only a
passion for the "incognito," one of the greatest pleasures of princes,
--a sort of momentary abdication, which enables them to put a little
real life into their existence, made insipid by the lack of
opposition. Louis XI., however, played the incognito openly. On these
occasions he was always the good fellow, endeavoring to please the
people of the middle classes, whom he made his allies against
feudality. For some time past he had found no opportunity to "make
himself populace" and espouse the domestic interests of some man
"engarrie" (an old word still used in Tours, meaning engaged) in
litigious affairs, so that he shouldered the anxieties of Maitre
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