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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: which, to use the bailiff's slang, had already received the last
sacrament. Fanny Beaupre had nothing left to pawn, and her salary was
pledged to pay her debts. After exhausting every possible advance of
pay from newspapers, magazines, and publishers, Etienne knew not of
what ink he could churn gold. Gambling-houses, so ruthlessly
suppressed, could no longer, as of old, cash I O U's drawn over the
green table by beggary in despair. In short, the journalist was
reduced to such extremity that he had just borrowed a hundred francs
of the poorest of his friends, Bixiou, from whom he had never yet
asked for a franc. What distressed Lousteau was not the fact of owing
five thousand francs, but seeing himself bereft of his elegance, and
The Muse of the Department |
