Read the excerpt below and answer the question
Sweet and gentle ladies, this day has been devoted, so far as I can see, to the doings of kings and sultans
and people of that sort, and therefore, so as not to place too great a distance between us, I want to tell you of
a marquis, whose actions, even though things turned out well for him in the end, were remarkable not so
much for their munificence as for their senseless brutality (p. 784)
Which option identifies the context clue that would be most helpful in determining the meaning of the underlined word?
o remarkable not so much for.. as for their senseless brutality
o ...not to place too great a distance between us.
even though things turned out well for him in the end
...to the doings of kings and sultans and people of that sort

word count 168

serve the people! ,” smoothly translated by julia lovell, offers an initial sample of yan lianke’s writing to an english-speaking audience. a bluntly drawn, mildly erotic fable, it teases mao zedong by poking fun at a true believer who obeys the chairman’s precepts too literally. to a western sensibility, the broad strokes of yan lianke’s humor would seem to pose little risk of inciting rebellion, whether of the flesh or of the body politic. but then, part of the book’s attraction is that it doesn’t have a western sensibility. it lets the reader see — or rather, intuit — what jokes chinese officials don’t consider funny, and how very little it takes for a writer to be branded an incendiary in 21st-century china, more than three decades after the death of mao, a decade after the death of deng xiaoping and seven years since china entered the world trade organization, a move that would seem to signal a willingness (however wary) to mingle with the rest of the world.