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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: drawn upon himself the enmity of Charles, Duke of Burgundy, found
refuge and protection at the court of Louis XI. The king was conscious
of the advantages he could gain from a man connected with all the
principal commercial houses of Flanders, Venice, and the Levant; he
naturalized, ennobled, and flattered Maitre Cornelius; all of which
was rarely done by Louis XI. The monarch pleased the Fleming as much
as the Fleming pleased the monarch. Wily, distrustful, and miserly;
equally politic, equally learned; superior, both of them, to their
epoch; understanding each other marvellously; they discarded and
resumed with equal facility, the one his conscience, the other his
religion; they loved the same Virgin, one by conviction, the other by
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