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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: company who habitually gathered at Madame de Listomere's had almost
guaranteed to him his nomination to the office of canon (then vacant
in the metropolitan Chapter of Saint-Gatien), assuring him that no one
deserved such promotion as he, whose rights, long overlooked, were
indisputable.
If he had lost the rubber, if he had heard that his rival, the Abbe
Poirel, was named canon, the worthy man would have thought the rain
extremely chilling; he might even have thought ill of life. But it so
chanced that he was in one of those rare moments when happy inward
sensations make a man oblivious of discomfort. In hastening his steps
he obeyed a more mechanical impulse, and truth (so essential in a
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