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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: delightful as it was swift, Sommervieux felt one morning the need for
resuming his work and his old habits. His wife was expecting their
first child. He saw some friends again. During the tedious discomforts
of the year when a young wife is nursing an infant for the first time,
he worked, no doubt, with zeal, but he occasionally sought diversion
in the fashionable world. The house which he was best pleased to
frequent was that of the Duchesse de Carigliano, who had at last
attracted the celebrated artist to her parties. When Augustine was
quite well again, and her boy no longer required the assiduous care
which debars a mother from social pleasures, Theodore had come to the
stage of wishing to know the joys of satisfied vanity to be found in
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