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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: gave the countess lists of the most needy, and often brought them to
her himself. Madame de Montcornet attended to these matters personally
in the great antechamber which opened upon the portico. It was a
beautiful waiting-room, floored with squares of white and red marble,
warmed by a porcelain stove, and furnished with benches covered with
red plush.
It was there that one morning, just before harvest, old Mother Tonsard
brought her granddaughter Catherine, who had to make, she said, a
dreadful confession,--dreadful for the honor of a poor but honest
family. While the old woman addressed the countess Catherine stood in
an attitude of conscious guilt. Then she related on her own account
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