From that moment things grew steadily more difficult at Chabannes.
India had become steadily more difficult for Britain to rule and without India, British hegemony in the Middle East, deemed a core national interest until the disaster of Suez in 1956, was increasingly unsustainable.
As in Cuba, it has grown steadily more difficult in Miami to untangle the thoughts of Elian's relatives from those of their advisers, lawyers and political hangers-on.
The United States will find it steadily more difficult and complex to either engage or disengage in the Middle East, in pursuit of energy independence or political stability or the war on terrorism, because oil from the gulf will become steadily more indispensable to the American economy, barring a wholesale change in the way the nation uses energy.
"As US and coalition forces withdraw, it will become steadily more difficult for both the implementing and oversight agencies to monitor projects," John Sopko, the special inspector general, told Congress in April.
Manufacturers must accurately understand user needs in order to develop successful products but the task is becoming steadily more difficult as user needs change more rapidly, and as firms increasingly seek to serve "markets of one".
It has become steadily more difficult for directors of Mr. Boorman's generation, and of his stubbornly independent temperament, to fund their fancies.
But passage has become steadily more difficult.
"Chemicals margins were significantly lower than in the second quarter last year, with trading conditions, particularly in the U.S.A., having become steadily more difficult," Shell said.
These are diseases that, when not addressed, become steadily more serious and more difficult to treat.
