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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: jealous of every one, even of her brothers and sisters. Then, after
creating a desert about her, the strange girl accused all nature of
her unreal solitude and her wilful griefs. Strong in the experience of
her twenty years, she blamed fate, because, not knowing that the
mainspring of happiness is in ourselves, she demanded it of the
circumstances of life. She would have fled to the ends of the earth to
escape a marriage such as those of her two sisters, and nevertheless
her heart was full of horrible jealousy at seeing them married, rich,
and happy. In short, she sometimes led her mother--who was as much a
victim to her vagaries as Monsieur de Fontaine--to suspect that she
had a touch of madness.
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