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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: which, still so little known, had filled her childish mind. Besides
this, she had a fancy to pass through Alencon so elegantly equipped
that no one could recognize her; to put her mother above the reach of
necessity, and also to send to poor Athanase, in a delicate manner, a
sum of money,--which in our age is to genius what in the middle ages
was the charger and the coat of mail that Rebecca conveyed to Ivanhoe.
One month passed away in the strangest uncertainties respecting the
marriage of Mademoiselle Cormon. A party of unbelievers denied the
marriage altogether; the believers, on the other hand, affirmed it. At
the end of two weeks, the faction of unbelief received a vigorous blow
in the sale of du Bousquier's house to the Marquis de Troisville, who
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