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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: privation, by the remembrance of their sufferings during a long and
cruel apprenticeship to life. Neither of them complained of their
trials. They were not so much implacable as impracticable in their
dealings with others in misfortune. To them, virtue, honor, loyalty,
all human sentiments consisted solely in the payment of their bills.
Irritable and irritating, without feelings, and sordid in their
economy, the brother and sister bore a dreadful reputation among the
other merchants of the rue Saint-Denis. Had it not been for their
connection with Provins, where they went three or four times a year,
when they could close the shop for a day or two, they would have had
no clerks or young women. But old Rogron, their father, sent them all
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