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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: chevalier. Above them were the attics where the linen was dried in
winter. Each apartment had two rooms,--one lighted from the street,
the other from the courtyard. Beneath the chevalier's room there lived
a paralytic, Madame Lardot's grandfather, an old buccaneer named
Grevin, who had served under Admiral Simeuse in India, and was now
stone-deaf. As for Madame Lardot, who occupied the other lodging on
the first floor, she had so great a weakness for persons of condition
that she may well have been thought blind to the ways of the
chevalier. To her, Monsieur de Valois was a despotic monarch who did
right in all things. Had any of her workwomen been guilty of a
happiness attributed to the chevalier she would have said, "He is so
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