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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: her condition, change, rather later, into strong personal self-esteem.
The canon saw plainly that to live comfortably with his landlady he
must pay her invariably the same attentions and be more infallible
than the pope himself. To compass this result, he allowed no points of
contact between himself and her except those that politeness demanded,
and those which necessarily exist between two persons living under the
same roof. Thus, though he and the Abbe Troubert took their regular
three meals a day, he avoided the family breakfast by inducing
Mademoiselle Gamard to send his coffee to his own room. He also
avoided the annoyance of supper by taking tea in the houses of friends
with whom he spent his evenings. In this way he seldom saw his
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