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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: restless anxiety of a madman about the sale of the sack and the
puncheons. Madame Margaritis could nearly always persuade him that the
wine had been sold at an enormous price, which she paid over to him,
and which he hid so cautiously that neither his wife nor the servant
who watched him had ever been able to discover its hiding-place.
The evening before Gaudissart reached Vouvray Madame Margaritis had
had more difficulty than usual in deceiving her husband, whose mind
happened to be uncommonly lucid.
"I really don't know how I shall get through to-morrow," she had said
to Madame Vernier. "Would you believe it, the good-man insists on
watching his two casks of wine. He has worried me so this whole day,
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