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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: perpetuated, I would gladly give five hundred pistoles to see
myself as like as that is to my dear old Rouville."
At this hint the Baroness looked at her young friend and smiled,
while her face lighted up with an expression of sudden gratitude.
Hippolyte suspected that the old admiral wished to offer him the
price of both portraits while paying for his own. His pride as an
artist, no less than his jealousy perhaps, took offence at the
thought, and he replied:
"Monsieur, if I were a portrait-painter I should not have done
this one."
The admiral bit his lip, and sat down to cards.
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