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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: "Perhaps you made the cousin notice it?"
"I did not take the trouble--"
"Place yourself always beside Eugenie, madame, and you need never take
the trouble to say anything to the young man against his cousin; he
will make his own comparisons, which--"
"Well, he has promised to dine with me the day after to-morrow."
"Ah! if you only /would/, madame--" said the abbe.
"What is it that you wish me to do, monsieur l'abbe? Do you mean to
offer me bad advice? I have not reached the age of thirty-nine,
without a stain upon my reputation, thank God! to compromise myself
now, even for the empire of the Great Mogul. You and I are of an age
 Eugenie Grandet |