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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: and the other so common, and making game of each other to the great
entertainment of the crowd, there was a moment when the Count found
himself wavering between the sublime and its parody, the farcical
extremes of human life. Ignoring the chain of incredible events which
had brought them to this smoky den, he believed himself to be the
plaything of some strange hallucination, and thought of Gambara and
Giardini as two abstractions.
Meanwhile, after a last piece of buffoonery from the deaf conductor in
reply to Gambara, the company had broken up laughing loudly. Giardini
went off to make coffee, which he begged the select few to accept, and
his wife cleared the table. The Count, sitting near the stove between
 Gambara |