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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: capable, as was proved again and again, of dying in a commonplace way,
and without the incitements of glory, for the welfare of his Free-
town.
Yet we shall find a tender and poetic side to this patriarchal life,
which will come naturally to the surface in the description of an
ancient house which, at the period when this history begins, was one
of the last in Douai to preserve the old-time characteristics of
Flemish life.
Of all the towns in the Departement du Nord, Douai is, alas, the most
modernized: there the innovating spirit has made the greatest strides,
and the love of social progress is the most diffused. There the old
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