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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: about thirty thousand acres of unused land, the ruins of the castle,
the gardens, park, and about five thousand acres of uncultivated land
on the plain beyond Montegnac. Graslin immediately bought other lands
in order to make himself master of the first peak in the chain of the
Correzan mountains on which the vast forest of Montegnac ended. Since
the imposition of taxes the Duc de Navarreins had never received more
than fifteen thousand francs per annum from this manor, once among the
richest tenures of the kingdom, the lands of which had escaped the
sale of "public domain" ordered by the Convention, on account probably
of their barrenness and the known difficulty of reclaiming them.
When the rector went at last to Madame Graslin's apartment, and saw
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