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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: and manages to get the titbits for himself. A strong fellow,
nevertheless, he can throw aside all this nonsense and mean business
when he flings away the stump of his cigar and says, with a glance at
some town, "I'll go and see what those people have got in their
stomachs."
[*] "Se gaudir," to enjoy, to make fun. "Gaudriole," gay discourse,
rather free.--Littre.
When buckled down to his work he became the slyest and cleverest of
diplomats. All things to all men, he knew how to accost a banker like
a capitalist, a magistrate like a functionary, a royalist with pious
and monarchical sentiments, a bourgeois as one of themselves. In
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