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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Ursula by Honore de Balzac: accumulation, which time increases into a retrograde geometric
progression, which multiplies of itself; reminding us of the
calculation of the wise man who, being told to choose a reward from
the king of Persia for inventing chess, asked for one ear of wheat for
the first move on the board, the reward to be doubled for each
succeeding move; when it was found that the kingdom was not large
enough to pay it. The net-work of the nobility, hemmed in by the net-
work of the bourgeoisie,--the antagonism of two protected races, one
protected by fixed institutions, the other by the active patience of
labor and the shrewdness of commerce,--produced the revolution of
1789. The two races almost reunited are to-day face to face with
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