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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: tale, we must for a moment forget the actors in it, and look back at
certain previous incidents, of which the last was closely concerned
with the death of Madame Crochard. The two parts will then form a
whole--a story which, by a law peculiar to life in Paris, was made up
of two distinct sets of actions.
Towards the close of the month of November 1805, a young barrister,
aged about six-and-twenty, was going down the stairs of the hotel
where the High Chancellor of the Empire resided, at about three
o'clock one morning. Having reached the courtyard in full evening
dress, under a keen frost, he could not help giving vent to an
exclamation of dismay--qualified, however, by the spirit which rarely
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