My really long quote

I open the envelope and read this little note written on a business card whose surface is so glossy that the ink, to the dismay of the defeated blotter, has bled slightly underneath each letter.

Madame Michel,
Would you be so kind as, to sign for the packages from the dry cleaner's this afternoon?
I'll pick them up at your loge this evening.
Scribbled signature

I was not prepared for such an underhanded attack. I collapse in shock on the nearest chair. I even begin to wonder if I am not going mad. Does this have the same effect on you, when this sort of thing happens?
Let me explain:
The cat is sleeping.
You've just read a harmless little sentence, and it has not caused you any pain or sudden fits of suffering, has it? Fair enough.
Now read again:
The cat, is sleeping.
Let me repeat it, so that there is no cause for ambiguity:
The cat comma is sleeping.
The cat, is sleeping.
Would you be so kind as, to sign for.
...we have this dribbling scribbling on vellum, courtesy of Sabine Pallieres, this comma slicing the sentence in half with all the trenchancy of a knife blade:
Would you be so kind as, to sign for the packages from the dry cleaner's?
If Sabine Pallieres had been a good Portugese woman born under a fig tree in Faro, or a concierge who'd just arrived from the high-rise banlieues of Paris, or if she were the mentally challenged member of a tolerant family who had taken her in out of the goodness of their hearts, I might have whole-heartedly forgiven such guilty nonchalance. But Sabine Pallieres is wealthy.
...Sabine Pallieres has no excuse. The gifts of fate come with a price. For those who have been favored by life's indulgence, rigorous respect in matters of beauty is a non-negotiable requirement. Language is a bountiful gift and its usage, an elaboration of community and society, is a sacred work...Society's elect, those whom fate has spared from the servitude that is the lot of the poor, must, consequently, shoulder the double burden of worshipping and respecting the splendors of language. Finally, Sabine Pallieres's misuse of punctuation constitutes an instance of blasphemy that is the more insiduous when one considers that there are marvelous poets born in stinking caravans or high-rise slums who do have for beauty the sacred respect that it is so rightfully owed.
To the rich, therefore, falls the burden of Beauty. And if they cannot assume it, then they deserve to die.
- from "The Elegance of the Hedgehog," by Muriel Barbery