PSAT Reading Practice Question 522

Question: 522

The following passage is an excerpt from the 1912 French novel "The Gods Will Have Blood." Citizen Brotteaux, an elderly humanist, is visiting Citizeness Gamelin, a widowed artist, for lunch. They are briefly interrupted by Gamelin's son, évariste, a young artist and recently appointed magistrate in the French Revolution.
That morning, very early, the Citizen
Brotteaux had made the Citizeness Gamelin
the magnificent gift of a capon.* It would
have been imprudent on his part to say how
05he had come by it: for he had been given
it by a certain lady of the market at Pointe
Eustache, whose letters he occasionally wrote
for her, and it was well known that the ladies
of the market cherished Royalist sympathies
10and were in touch by correspondence with
the émigrés. The Citizeness Gamelin had
accepted the capon with deep gratitude. Such
things were scarcely ever seen now; food of all
kinds became more expensive every day. The
15people feared a famine: everybody said that
that was what the aristocrats wanted, and that
the food-grabbers were preparing for it.
Invited to eat his share of the capon at
the midday meal, the Citizen Brotteaux duly
20appeared and congratulated his hostess on
the rich aroma of her cooking. For indeed
the artist's studio was filled with the smell of
savory meat soup.
"You are a true gentleman, monsieur,"
25replied the good lady. "As an appetizer for
your capon, I've made some vegetable soup
with a slice of bacon and a big beef bone.
There's nothing gives soup a flavor better
than a marrow bone."
30"A praiseworthy maxim, Citizeness,"
replied old Brotteaux. "And you will do
wisely, if tomorrow, and the next day, and
all the rest of the week, you put this precious
bone back into the pot, so that it will
35continue to flavor it. The wise woman of
Panzoust used to do that: she made a soup of
green cabbages with a rind of bacon and an
old savorados. That is what they call the tasty
and succulent medullary bone in her country,
40which is also my country."
"This lady you speak of, monsieur," the
Citizeness Gamelin put in, "wasn't she a little
on the careful side, making the same bone
last so long?"
45"She did not live on a grand scale,"
Brotteaux replied. "She was poor, even
though she was a prophetess."
At that moment évariste Gamelin came in,
still deeply affected by the confession he had
50just heard and promising himself he would
discover the identity of élodie's seducer, so
that he might wreak on him the vengeance of
the Republic and of himself.
After the usual politenesses, the Citizen
55Brotteaux resumed the thread of his discourse:
"Those who make a trade out of foretelling
the future rarely grow rich. Their attempts to
deceive are too easily found out and arouse
detestation. And yet it would be necessary
60to detest them much, much more if they
foretold the future correctly. For a man's life
would become intolerable, if he knew what
was going to happen to him. He would be
made aware of future evils, and would suffer
65their agonies in advance, while he would get
no joy of present blessings since he would
know how they would end. Ignorance is the
necessary condition of human happiness,
and it has to be admitted that on the whole
70mankind observes that condition well. We
are almost entirely ignorant of ourselves;
absolutely of others. In ignorance, we find
our bliss; in illusions, our happiness."
The Citizeness Gamelin put the soup on
75the table, said the Benedicite, seated her son
and her guest, and began to eat standing up,
declining the chair which Brotteaux offered
her next to him, since, she said, she knew
what courtesy required of her.
*A capon is a domesticated rooster.

The characters in the passage use the terms "citizen" and "citizeness" to distinguish between

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