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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: fantastic juxtaposition of seven letters; seven! the most significant
of all the cabalistic numbers. And he died at five-and-thirty, so his
life extended over seven lustres.
Marcas! Does it not hint of some precious object that is broken with a
fall, with or without a crash?
I had finished studying the law in Paris in 1836. I lived at that time
in the Rue Corneille in a house where none but students came to lodge,
one of those large houses where there is a winding staircase quite at
the back lighted below from the street, higher up by borrowed lights,
and at the top by a skylight. There were forty furnished rooms--
furnished as students' rooms are! What does youth demand more than was
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