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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: soul. Be not surprised, therefore, if I dwell on all these homely
scenes; the smallest details of that simple, almost common life are
ties which, frail as they may seem, bound me in closest union to the
countess.
The interests of her children gave Madame de Mortsauf almost as much
anxiety as their health. I soon saw the truth of what she had told me
as to her secret share in the management of the family affairs, into
which I became slowly initiated. After ten years' steady effort Madame
de Mortsauf had changed the method of cultivating the estate. She had
"put it in fours," as the saying is in those parts, meaning the new
system under which wheat is sown every four years only, so as to make
The Lily of the Valley |
