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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: For five years past he had been left to himself, deserted by his wife;
he had gone through many misfortunes. An instrument on which he had
relied to make his fortune, and which he called a /Panharmonicon/, had
been sold by order of the Court on the public square, Place du
Chatelet, together with a cartload of music paper scrawled with notes.
The day after the sale, these scores had served in the market to wrap
up butter, fish, and fruit.
Thus the three grand operas of which the poor man would boast, but
which an old Neapolitan cook, who was now but a patcher up of broken
meats, declared to be a heap of nonsense, were scattered throughout
Paris on the trucks of costermongers. But at any rate, the landlord
Gambara |
