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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: three for me--full of invaluable advice--the sort of information which
experience alone can supply, such landmarks as only genius can place.
In those papers, smelling of tobacco, and covered with writing so vile
as to be almost hieroglyphic, there are suggestions for a fortune, and
forecasts of unerring acumen. There are hints as to certain parts of
America and Asia which have been fully justified, both before and
since Juste and I could set out.
Marcas, like us, was in the most abject poverty. He earned, indeed,
his daily bread, but he had neither linen, clothes, nor shoes. He did
not make himself out any better than he was; his dreams had been of
luxury as well as of power. He did not admit that this was the real
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