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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: Watteville, thinking she had land enough, had placed her savings in
the three per cents, in 1830. Rosalie's dowry would therefore, as the
best informed opined, amount to about twenty thousand francs a year.
So for the last five years Amedee had worked like a mole to get into
the highest favor of the severe Baroness, while laying himself out to
flatter Mademoiselle de Watteville's conceit.
Madame de Watteville was in the secret of the devices by which Amedee
succeeded in keeping up his rank in Besancon, and esteemed him highly
for it. Soulas had placed himself under her wing when she was thirty,
and at that time had dared to admire her and make her his idol; he had
got so far as to be allowed--he alone in the world--to pour out to her
 Albert Savarus |