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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: enough to discern the progress of a passion which age had converted
into a sort of craze. He wanted to be alone in the house, and had
taken the rooms one by one as they fell vacant. In his own room he had
changed nothing; the furniture which I knew so well sixteen years ago
looked the same as ever; it might have been kept under a glass case.
Gobseck's faithful old portress, with her husband, a pensioner, who
sat in the entry while she was upstairs, was still his housekeeper and
charwoman, and now in addition his sick-nurse. In spite of his
feebleness, Gobseck saw his clients himself as heretofore, and
received sums of money; his affairs had been so simplified, that he
only needed to send his pensioner out now and again on an errand, and
 Gobseck |