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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: overbearing Emilie. This treaty between interest and pride was not,
however, so firmly cemented but that the young despot was, not
unfrequently, the cause of revolts in her little realm. Scenes, which
the highest circles would not have disowned, kept up a sarcastic
temper among all the members of this powerful family; and this,
without seriously diminishing the regard they professed in public,
degenerated sometimes in private into sentiments far from charitable.
Thus the Lieutenant-General's wife, having become a Baronne, thought
herself quite as noble as a Kergarouet, and imagined that her good
hundred thousand francs a year gave her the right to be as impertinent
as her sister-in-law Emilie, whom she would sometimes wish to see
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