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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: picturesque by strong contrasts of light and shade. The figures of the
head of the family and his wife, the faces of the apprentices, and the
pure form of Augustine, near whom a fat chubby-cheeked maid was
standing, composed so strange a group; the heads were so singular, and
every face had so candid an expression; it was so easy to read the
peace, the silence, the modest way of life in this family, that to an
artist accustomed to render nature, there was something hopeless in
any attempt to depict this scene, come upon by chance. The stranger
was a young painter, who, seven years before, had gained the first
prize for painting. He had now just come back from Rome. His soul,
full-fed with poetry; his eyes, satiated with Raphael and Michael
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